Resident Hellsing: Apocalypse
by Keith B. Real
Summary: The world has been overrun by the T-virus. Seras and Integra are the only survivors of Hellsing and must unite with old friends and join forces with their enemies in order to salvage what's left of humanity.
1. Chapter 1

I do not own Hellsing

I do not own Hellsing

Author's note: _Since it will be a while before I can play Resident Evil 5, and thus steal the plot, I've decided to bring some movie elements into this. This story is completely outside the Resident Hellsing series and is not intended to be the end. If and when I play RE5 and if and when I write a fic based on it, this story will effectively never have happened. _

_It's also a complete bastardization of the games, movies, manga, and previous Resident Hellsing stories. Good luck. _

**Prologue.**

Even after the world had ended, Dover was a beautiful place at night. During the day, the black clouds over the mainland horizon and the smell of rot being blown over the wind ruined things a bit.

Seras Victoria had taken up residence in a lighthouse, the top of which she used to look at the cliffs in the evenings. The days she spent sleeping under a heap of blankets down in the lighthouse cellar, far from the sunlight which, while not harmful, made her feel out of place and irritable as well as weak and squinty.

Her one companion, Sir Integra Hellsing, spent her nights asleep in the lighthouse's living quarters, the windows boarded up and the door barricaded, just in case something or someone should try to get in. It wasn't likely, considering their location on a rock accessible on foot only by going over some more rocks when the tide was low, but it was possible considering the nature of the threat.

Sitting a little desk complete with a stool she had dragged up from bellow, she opened a five-subject green spiral notebook, the cheap sort, and wrote what she thought the day's date might be.

I think I know what's missing. she wrote with a red pen. No one came and told us we'd lost. There was no debriefing. No one called us failures, no one said it was time to pack it up and go home.

She put the pen in her mouth and pondered a moment, looking out over the cliffs and watching the sea lap against the shore. The thought in the back of her mind was that someone would read her little diary someday. It wasn't as though there weren't other diaries out there explaining what had happened, but she had some insight as to what had ended the world that she didn't think others who knew would be honest enough to give.

Many pages in her diary already detailed what she was, who she worked for, and what had caused the world to go to pot. That had all been easy, but what she wanted to write now wasn't.

Millennium didn't plan on surviving. I think that's why we lost. You can't beat an enemy that's set out to lose. I suppose their big plan was to kill Master she scribbled out Master and wrote Alucard instead. which they did, but I suppose they just wanted to fight. I guess they were more like suicide bombers than proper soldiers.

She let out a sigh and wondered if even with Alucard's help, Umbrella might have been stopped. She supposed that the supposedly defunct pharmaceutical corporation had been not unlike Millennium in its invincibleness. Like a boy who played with matches, it didn't matter how much his parents kept an eye on him or scolded him, he was bound to burn the house down eventually. Seras wrote as much in her dairy.

Crumpling the last few pages came into mind when she thought of Integra possibly reading it. Excuses and explanations for failure were all things Integra would hate, although judging by how she had been lately, Sir Hellsing might be a little more forgiving of angst.

Seras closed the diary and decided that perhaps not letting Integra see it would suffice.

An orange light at the top of the cliff caught Sera's attention. Squinting into the darkness, she saw that it was a small campfire, recently lit. She imagined haggard travelers finally finding a place they thought was safe for a night and making a late fire. It was a stupid, and likely fatal error on their part, as nothing called a swarm of zombies faster these days than a nighttime campfire.

Getting up from her desk, she left the top of the lighthouse and descended the spiraling stairs where at the bottom a wooden door led her into the lighthouse's living room. It had been stocked with enough supplies to last Integra two years, and despite their collective attempts to arrange things, the room still looked trashed.

A machete, its blade covered in black spray paint and its handle wrapped in grip tape, rested on a wooden crate next to its nylon sheath. Seras sheathed it and hooked it to her belt. The outfit she wore was one from her Hellsing days, only black in color. The skirt a little too short to be considered modest and the top a little tight in the chest. It was complete with black stocking and boots, and Seras thought she might never get around to demanding an explanation for it. It reminded her of better times though, so she wore it.

With her weapon in hand, she climbed back up the stairs to the top of the lighthouse and walked outside into the little balcony that encircled the top. Closing her eyes, she imagined herself being condensed with all of her molecules coming together, including her clothes and machete, to take up less space. All matter was mostly empty space, she had once read; that bit of info made the trick she was performing all the easier.

Shrinking, she imagined herself taking the shape of a black bird. A raven to be precise. She thought of her face as the beak, her legs talons, and her arms wings. Once her new sense of self was cemented in her mind, she opened her eyes and leapt into the air, flapping in order to gain enough altitude and catch a thermal updraft.

Being a vampire, she would need as much height as she could get. Even though the water between the lighthouse and the shore was relatively shallow, it was the ocean after all and going over it in any way other than in a dirt-filled coffin wasn't pleasant.

She came to rest in a dead tree, fifty meters or so from the campsite. A dark blue van with its hood up was being examined with a small flashlight by a portly man in a dirty white t-shirt, while two teenagers tended the fire. They had gathered a substantial amount of wood, along with an old couch and were quickly turning their cooking flame into a bonfire.

Tilting her head, she saw the figure of a man standing off in the darkness looking down the field towards the road. She figured he was their lookout, although where they thought they would run to if zombies came, Seras didn't know. Between the fire and their position near the cliff, it seemed as though they were eager to commit suicide.

"It's shot," the man with his head in the guts of the car said. "The damned thing's shot to hell." His voice was gentler than Seras imagined it would be. She wondered if he was the father of the two boys by the fire, neither of whom said anything about the proclamation of the van's death.

The other man came back. He was older than the two teens but not older than the man with the van. He was wearing a black leather jacket and looked like a bit of a hardcase. "Looks clear," he said. "Shot eh? Let me look." He took the flashlight from the older man and began examining the engine. The two boys also came over.

Seras shuffled her feet on the branch and wondered what it was about men that made them think gathering around a broken vehicle would make it start up again. She watched them for a while, wondering when the first zombies would show up. Perhaps it might be a pack of zombie dogs that found them.

"So what now?" the portly man asked.

"We wait 'till morning," the man in leather said. "Nothing else to do."

"We should keep a watch," one of the boys, who was wearing a red hoodie, said.

"I've got it," the leather man said, putting his foot on the top of a wheel and climbing atop the closed hood, then the roof. "You all get some shuteye. I'll wake one of you up in a few hours."

The remaining three piled into the back of the van, leaving the fire to burn. Seras couldn't believe their foolishness. It was possible they'd been living in a survivor camp for a long time and had recently been forced out. All of the current nomads knew better than this.

Ruffling her feathers, she got ready for a long wait. It wasn't necessary, as not more than an hour and a half after the man on the roof had begun to snore, did she hear the first clumsy footsteps trudging up through the dying grass towards the campfire.

Flitting over to another branch, she saw that about fifteen, maybe even twenty, zombies had come from the road up the hill, having sighted the flames. Their low moans had yet to become hungry howls, and Seras let them close some distance before screeching loudly to wake the snoozing lookout.

He jerked in his sleep, but didn't awaken. Flying to the ground, letting her form expand to take her original shape, she drew the machete from its sheath and enjoyed the heat from the bonfire against her back. As the zombies came closer, they began moaning louder, causing the leather clad lookout to awaken and nearly fall off the roof in surprise. "Jesus!" he shouted. "Wake up!" He banged on the roof of the van, yelling as he did and making the zombies more agitated.

Seras went to the back of the van, putting herself between it and the zombies. When the first one was close enough, she swung, shearing its head in half. Her strength, combined with sharp blade made it her favorite weapon for dispatching human zombies.

She calmly cut down zombies as they came at her, making sure to cleave the skull and not leave a snarling head that could bite and pass the infection to a human. She could hear the commotion behind her, the doors opening and slamming, their weapons being drawn, their shouts of confusion.

When she downed all of the zombies, she wiped the machete off in the grass and sheathed it. Turning, she saw four stunned humans by a van, their faces hidden by the fire behind them. "Put that fire out. That's what attracted them," she said.

The two teenagers quickly did as they were told as she walked between the two men. "Next time, keep away from places like this where you're trapped if you break down." She faced the man in the leather jacket. "And you, don't fall sleep on your watch. Tin cans on a string have done better guard duty."

"Who are you?" the portly father said. "Where'd you come from?"

"Nowhere," Seras said, looking at the two men, wondering which was stronger. The one in the leather seemed more fit, so she picked him. "You, me, down by that tree, now."

She grabbed him by the arm and led him over to the tree she had been perched on. While he was confused, he didn't fight her or ask more questions. His companions didn't follow either.

"You need to get smart, or you're not going to make it," Seras said, fiddling with the collar on his jacket. He smelled of sweat, but the blood pumping beneath his skin smelled sweet.

"We just got on the road," he said. "After the camp was turned out…"

She moved her head in as if to kiss him, all the better to keep his guard down, and sank her fangs into his neck. She let three or mouthfuls down her throat before licking the wound, stemming the bleeding. Knees weak, she let him sink to the ground. He would be lightheaded and tired for a while, but he would be fine. At least until the inevitable occurred.

Leaving the scene at a light jog, she went down a knoll out of sight and turned herself into a raven once more then flew back to the top of the lighthouse where she resumed her human form and went down into the living room, not wanting to be tempted to keep an eye on the four people she had just saved.

Integra was brewing tea, using the fireplace. She sat on a crate in her green officers trousers, but wore a black tank top. "What have you been on about all evening?" she asked, looking at the fire.

"Some commotion out on the mainland. Not much, really," Seras said, sitting down on a worn couch that had been in the lighthouse.

"You look fed."

"I gave some blokes a few survival tips and a free pass to tomorrow. I thought it was a small price."

"There was a time when you wouldn't even drink it from medical bags," Integra said as the tea kettle began to screech. She removed it using a fire poker and used a towel to pour the water.

"There was a time when I would've done more to help," Seras said.

Integra said nothing and made her tea. "I couldn't sleep. There's nothing that needs to be done tomorrow, so I may as well sleep in. I guess life's not all bad. Fancy a game of chess?"

Seras shrugged and got their chessboard. It was missing a few pieces, but bits of foil and some knickknacks substituted. Both played a distracted game, but in the end, Seras lost. "We need a new game," Seras said.

**To be continued…**


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter One

**Chapter One.**

Albert Wesker sat at a table that had likely cost more than some people's houses. For the thousandth time he caught himself wishing Umbrella had spent more money stockpiling supplies and less on tables.

The only thing the table was doing at the moment was holding a pile of dossiers, all documenting everything Umbrella knew about certain persons of interest. Wesker had just finished going through his own file and was surprised at some of the information it contained. Apparently, he had a psychological attachment to his sunglasses and always wore his hair in the same manner, slicked back.

He wasn't about to take his sunglasses off simply because some piece of paper had him pegged, but he did lower them to give the rest of the stack a hard look. Somewhere in the files was the key to pulling the entire world out of the hole it had sunk into. Hole, who was he kidding, it was a grave.

Umbrella was all about raising dead things from graves, so he pulled a dossier out at random and opened it. It detailed the woman at the core of the Alice project, Alice. It was just the dossier he had been looking for actually, as he believed Alice to be _the_ key to the entire problem.

She was like him. Her DNA had bonded with the T-virus, giving her all of its gifts with none of its grotesque physical mutations nor any of its mind-obliterating properties. He flopped the dossier down on the table in disgust, remembering that there were some key differences between Alice and himself.

One was that he wasn't completely free of mutation. His irises were red and his pupils yellow and slitted. He has also noticed, along with whoever had written his dossier, that was more aggressive than he used to be. Sometimes it was a battle to keep from snapping the neck of an incompetent researcher, or to keep from smashing valuable equipment when it failed to work properly.

It was these things that made his genetic bond incomplete and, as tests would show, not suitable for being used a vaccine or a cure for the T-virus. Alice herself was needed for any headway to be made. Even the clones of her didn't work.

The largest and most problematic difference between himself an Alice was that he knew his current location, while Alice, if she was even alive, could be anywhere on the planet.

That wasn't exactly true, he thought as he tapped her dossier. By all accounts, it was likely she was somewhere in the American west, but that was a big place, and far away too. As it currently stood, he was able to contact the other White Umbrella facilities via satellite from his current location in Egypt. The facility he had called home for the past year was actually bellow another facility, one that had been destroyed by Vatican agents of all people.

A memo had been sent to the Nevada base telling them to keep an eye out for Alice. It had largely been a symbolic gesture, as everyone in the place had to spend much of their time underground.

He pulled out another dossier, this one on Sir Integra Hellsing. She was likely dead, but she had reminded him of another possibility. Putting Integra Hellsing back in the stack, he searched for another dossier, this one on Seras Victoria, an agent of the Hellsing Organization and vampire.

Hellsing and its agents had given Umbrella researchers a hard time. They defied everything everyone knew about science. To the unenlightened, it would seem that the vampires of Hellsing were indeed the magical creatures of lore and legend, but Wesker wasn't fooled. He knew there was science behind what the vampires Alucard and Seras were capable of, just science no one understood.

Reading the Victoria dossier, he thought the T-virus had been the same way in its level of bafflement. Wesker felt that calling it a virus was simply the result of lacking a better term, as no other virus did the things it did. It was likely that studies would show, should they ever obtain a sample, that what made Seras Victoria a vampire was the same thing that made a T-virus mutant.

Seras Victoria had last been sighted in London, and while that was some time ago, well before the T-virus began running rampant, it was believed she was still there if she was still alive. Certain data recordings suggested she was.

Wesker envisioned making people immune to the T-virus by making them vampires. The only problem was, where would they get the blood to survive? Perhaps cloning humans to be used as blood sacks…they could be fed intravenously dead clones…like in that movie with the robots…

He slammed his fist onto the desk, nearly cracking it. Every plan he concocted that didn't involve using Alice to synthesize a cure was as unfeasible as it was stupid. The temptation to leave the facility and its researchers behind to wander the earth as a nomad was sometimes great. He was certain a new form of T-virus ecology would develop on the earth and wondered how it would look, but leaving would seem too much like admitting defeat.

There was simply not enough information to act in any one direction. Hating the thought of waiting for something to break, he kept sifting through dossiers. The priest involved in the Veronica incident came up along with Los Illuminados and Millennium. All had been looked over multiple times, with this time yielding no more than the previous brainstorming sessions.

He left the folders on the table and got up to go find a researcher. One of the useless ones who was doing little more than use up supplies.

The intercom in his quarters beeped. He pushed the button. "Speak."

"Mr. Wesker, there's something here you should see."

He stood up immediately and headed towards the monitoring room. Everyone in the compound knew better than to say such things to him without good cause, so there was no worry that whatever it was he should see was indeed something he should see.

When he entered the room, there was a lone researcher in a white lab coat looking worried and afraid. He was holding long sheets of paper in his hand and a light on one of the monitors was blinking. "This just came in from Nevada, sir, along with a call from Dr. Isaacs."

He took the papers from the researcher without speaking and looked at them. They showed a substantial spike in psyionic activity, located on the eastern edge of Nevada. "Open the channel," Wesker said.

The researcher pushed a button and the face of Dr. Isaacs appeared on the monitor. He was an older man, unlike many of Umbrella's other researchers. Like them, however, Wesker thought he was more than a little rash and single-minded. "What is it Dr. Isaacs," Wesker said.

"I think the data speaks for itself," he said. "It's Alice. It has to be. We've already determined her general location and are searching via satellite. We'll move to capture as soon as we…"

"No," Wesker said. "I'll handle this."

Isaacs face contorted in anger, but mellowed back out once he remembered himself. "You? You're in Egypt. The trip would be a tremendous drain of limited resources, surely you know that."

"You attempting to seize her would also be a drain, as well as a complete waste. You must be aware, more than anyone, what she's capable of."

Isaacs seemed at a loss, but true to form tried to make his case. "She'll cooperate if we explain to her what we're trying to do. If she values…"

"And what if she doesn't?" Wesker said. "What if she simply doesn't care anymore? Had that thought ever occurred to you? We've given her absolutely no reason to trust us and you're not likely to convince her that we're even capable of saving what's left of the world. It could very well be that she'll kill the team you send and make every effort to trace them back to your location where she'll finish the job. Who knows? She may even use the information your facility's databases to track down the rest of White Umbrella."

That was a stretch, but Wesker didn't want Isaacs mucking up his half-formed plan. Similar psychic readings had been tracked in England, near Dover, but Wesker had thought little of them, as the science behind them was shady at best.

"You're being overly cautious," Isaacs said. "At this rate, we've little to lose."

"Wrong," Wesker said. "We have _everything_ to lose. And if you're the one that loses it, I'll see to your disciplinary proceedings personally. Do I make myself clear?"

Isaacs's face had become a careful mask, but he was clearly sorry he had even called. "Yes, Mr. Wesker. We'll keep an eye on things and inform you of any changes."

"I'm sure you will," Wesker said. The monitor went blank, and Wesker turned to the researcher. "Get me everything we have on England."

"Everything?"

"That is the word I used, yes," Wesker said. "Do it quickly. We have to find a needle in a haystack and convince it to help us find another needle in another haystack. Go."

The researcher left quickly, leaving Wesker to churn.

**To be continued…**


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

**Chapter Three.**

Seras looked down from atop the lighthouse and felt the urge to spit. Floating in the water, howling on the rocks, and banging on the lighthouse doors were more zombies than she could count.

"What a bloody mess," Seras said for the hundredth time. "God, look at them all."

"I see them, Seras," Integra said. "They woke me up, remember?"

Seras spit over the rail, hating the rotting things despite herself. "Well what now? We're trapped and soon they'll be in the house where our supplies are kept."

"My supplies," Integra said. "You don't need to eat."

She looked at the side of Integra's calm features as her face pointed downward into the writhing figures lurching about the gloom. "What's that supposed to mean?" Seras said.

Integra shrugged. "It means you've got nothing to worry about, aside from maybe me."

Seras licked the back of her teeth, thinking she might say something. Integra had been a puzzle to her lately, being as pragmatic and optimistic as ever, but saying odd things every so often. "Yes, I'm worried about _you,_" she said. "What else have I got to worry me?"

"You should write for greeting card companies," Integra said. "Let's discuss how we're going to get rid of them and not worry about where they all came from, shall we?"

The problem was that most were floating around in the rough waves and couldn't be practically dispatched until the tide went out or they washed up on the rock. Seras could, eventually, kill them all but more would always come and it would be tiring to hack them all up. She would need to drink blood after it was all said and done, and the nomads she had met by the cliff a week or so earlier had gone off, leaving only Integra.

She'd had a few drops of Integra's blood before, back when she was having trouble getting over being a vampire and needing to drink the stuff. She hadn't drank it since, and these days, didn't want to.

"I could bring up my Harkonnen and blast them all to bits," Seras said.

"Seems like a waste of ammo," Integra said. "But let's not rule it out."

"You could sit on the roof with a harpoon on a rope."

"That's silly," Integra said. "And it would take forever. We need to keep them out of the lighthouse living area, so there's a time limit. They might even break in before the tide goes back out."

They had moved as many supplies up into the lighthouse tower as they could fit, but it wasn't much. Losing the living area to zombies was a bad scenario, Seras thought, worse than Integra was making it out to be.

"Why don't I just go down there and clear the ones near the house off for now," Seras said. "Shouldn't be too much trouble."

She was about to head down when the sound of a motor caught in her ears. She looked to the shore first, but then realized it was a boat motor. Both Integra and Seras came around to the seaside of the tower and looked, with Seras spotting the source of the noise. "It's a rubber boat," she said. "I think I see a proper ship out a ways as well."

Neither made any attempt to hail the rubber boat, or to warn it. "I'll go take care of it," Seras said, leaping over the rail and swinging into the side of the lighthouse. As she fell, she skimmed the side of the house until near the bottom where she pushed off and landed on the roof of the lighthouse's living section. Walking to the edge of the roof, she stopped and got a better look at who was in the boat as it tooled its way over splashing corpses towards a section of the rock where he would be able to disembark.

The motor cut out and the man with slicked back blond hair jumped out of the boat and onto the shore like some sort of grasshopper. He was dressed in a black wetsuit with red trim and didn't seem to particularly mind the zombies lunging at him. He batted them away with his gloved fists, pulping their skulls as they got close.

Seeing Seras atop the lighthouse roof, he took a running jump up onto it with her, making her draw her machete. "Who the blazes are you?" she said.

The man was wearing sunglasses and keeping his face a mask. "I had hoped to meet you under less stressful conditions," he said. "I'm afraid who I am and who I represent are going to be…off-putting."

"You're already putting me off," Seras said. "You're not human, that's for certain."

The man shrugged. "It goes against my better judgment, but I'll open with the deal-breaker. My name is Albert Wesker and I work for Umbrella."

He ducked her machete and tried to sweep her legs from beneath her with a kick. She was ready for it and jumped, bringing her machete down and forcing him to roll off to the side. The machete bit into the shingled roof, but was pulled out easily. Seras wasted no time coming at him again, swinging the machete from side to side at different arks and angles, giving him no opening to counter attack.

At the end of a swing, he bull rushed her, getting inside of her arc and putting his arms up to shove her backward. Instead of backing up, she stepped forward to meet him, colliding. Putting one leg behind his, she twisted, taking them both down with her on top and slightly off to the side.

Seras struggled to get the machete into a place where she could impale him as he did his best to roll onto his back and grab her wrists. "Hear me out," he said through clenched teeth. "We need your help."

"I'll help you," Seras said, her teeth lengthening and becoming sharp. Her eyes must have gone red as well, as she felt herself becoming angrier and less coherent in thought. "I'll help you die," she said.

"Seras!" Integra shouted above the zombie wails and the waves. "Seras, hear him out. I've got you covered."

Integra's marksmanship was nothing to scoff at, and so she stopped trying to stab Wesker. She had managed to straddle him and had the machete in both hands, pointed down towards his chest. His own strength had so far stopped her.

Wesker used the pause to pull his legs up and shove Seras off him. Rolling backward, he got to his feet. There was a gunshot and a hole in the roof between his legs. "Move and the next one goes in your head," Integra shouted.

"If you've still got it," Seras said.

"I expected a poor reception," Wesker said. "But not such poor communication circumstances. Can we discuss this somewhere where we wouldn't have to shout?"

Seras had Wesker clasp his hands behind his back as she led him inside the lighthouse, past the zombies, and up the tower where Integra stood with a gun, feeling confident she could split him down the middle if he tried anything. She tapped him lightly with the machete before he rounded the apex of the lighthouse's window. If he wanted to attack Integra, he would have to do it on a curve or break through a lot of glass and metal.

"Umbrella must be suffering a personnel shortage," Integra said, "to be sending you."

"Perhaps we should hire you as a consultant on dealing with personnel shortages," Wesker said.

"Not likely. State your case, Wesker, as you and your people are currently at the very top of my 'To Kill' list."

Wesker cracked a smile. "This isn't the world Umbrella had envisioned," he said. "The goal was order and peace, not chaos and death."

Seras felt her arm twitch with the urge to strike Wesker's head off, but she fought it. If this was Wesker's opening argument, she would likely get her chance in a few minutes.

"You must realize how hollow and ridiculous you sound," Integra said. "If you don't cut to the core of this little visit, I'm going to have my vampire kill you."

"Umbrella is working on a cure for the virus," Wesker said. "But we need certain things before we can proceed. I've come to ask for your cooperation in obtaining those things."

Integra laughed. "You think vampirism is the answer to the T-virus? That line of research is a dead end; crazier people than you have tried."

"No," Wesker said quickly. "We're not looking to use vampires in that manner. What we need is the DNA of a certain individual who had bonded with the T-virus so completely that there are no negative side-effects. With that DNA sample we could vaccinate the remains of humanity and even eliminate or perhaps domesticate the T-virus carriers."

After a pause, Integra laughed even louder. Even Seras let a menacing grin spread across her face, anticipating burying her blade in Wesker's skull. She wondered if he even had red blood and a grey brain, or was it just a mass of ooze, like an insect, inside his cranium.

"Am I supposed to believe that you'll use whatever vaccine or cure you create to help the people who are left?" Integra said. "You must think the apocalypse has driven me insane or addled my brains. I can assure you, it hasn't. If you did make such a thing, you would most likely keep it to yourselves and rebuild the world from your own putrid stock."

"Your naiveté astounds me, Sir Hellsing," Wesker said. "Or perhaps it's your cynicism. In either case, do you seriously believe that all of Umbrella's current employees are heartless monsters?"

"Yes," Both women answered in unison.

Wesker cleared his throat. "Fair enough. Granted, I'm a horrible monster by the general definition and so are many of our executives and researchers. I have to wonder though, what would you say about their families?"

"Is this the part where you pull out pictures of the Umbrella orphanage or wherever the ones who've managed to breed store their children?" Integra asked.

Wesker shifted slightly. "I was told to bring family photos, but there's no reason you should believe a photograph," Wesker said. "However, if wasting the resources it would take to show you actual children of Umbrella employees would encourage you to accept our offer, we can make arrangements."

"Let me give you a tip on negotiations," Integra said. "Words mean absolutely nothing. You'll say anything to make us cooperate, and there's nothing you can say that I can't rule out as an utter fabrication. Your actions are what's going to win my trust, and even those will be highly suspect."

Wesker said nothing for a long moment. Just as the tension in the air began to mount, Wesker broke the silence. "Information is the only thing tangible I currently have on me. I hope it will do," he said. "What we need is the DNA of a woman named Alice who has bonded on a genetic level with the T-virus in a manner we haven't seen before. Even her clones have provided inferior samples. There's something about her physiology that is the key to solving this problem."

Taking a deep breath, Integra closed her eyes briefly. "Then why are you speaking to _us_, Wesker? Shouldn't you be wasting your breath with this Alice person?"

"Many reasons," Wesker said. "One, we have even less of an idea where she is than we did with you. Two, she hates Umbrella more than you ever could, and three, she would attack and kill Umbrella employees on sight. I need you two to help find her and convince, or otherwise coerce, her into working with us."

"Your story just keeps getting worse," Seras said, unable to remain silent any longer. "Don't you get it? You're the problem, not the solution. What is it with you horrible people and that way of thinking? First it's world peace through awful bioweapons, and now it's curing the disease you've created and unleashed with that very same disease and using your enemies to help you to boot. You're all as stupid as you are insane."

Wesker chuckled. "I suppose Hellsing would know all about the folly of fighting fire with fire," Wesker said. "I don't have time to trade more quips. I'll come back in two nights, if you'll let me leave, for your answer. I'll also leave you with this: what is there to lose? The T-virus _will_ finish off everything, that's a certainty. Even if I happen to be lying, you've got nothing to lose but a few sad, short years as nomads on the run from that down there," he said, pointing to the crawling, putrid serf bellow.

He stepped forward and looked about to leap clear over the side of the rail when Integra said "Hold." Wesker stopped and so did Seras's machete. "We don't need two nights," Integra said. "We'll work with you. Have a boat down on the shore when the tide goes out, as I'm not mucking about with those zombies more than I have to."

"W-what?" Seras said. "You can't…he…"

"His story is so stupid and obviously desperate there must be something to it. I'd like to know what that something is, and liar or not, he has a point about there being little at stake."

Wesker now turned, slowly to face Integra with his head angled towards Seras. "Well then, if there's nothing else, perhaps we should leave. Could I get some help in clearing out bellow?" He now looked at Seras.

"Help him, Seras. I'll get out things in order."

"If you're playing us, you'll regret it," Seras said, waiting until Wesker descended the lighthouse tower before following.

**To be continued…**


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

**Chapter Four.**

Seras sat at a small table across from Integra beneath a blinking light in a dark metal room that seemed mostly made up of shadows. Despite the comforting semi-darkness, she could feel the churning ocean beneath her feet through the steel.

Staring glumly at the playing cards in her hand, she laid them down on the table. "Fold," she said.

Integra took the pile of matches they had been using to place bets. "Your poker face is awful," Integra said. "Is the ocean still getting at you?"

"A little," Seras said. "I thought the boat would be big enough to not be a bother."

"How long can you stay asleep in that coffin? Alucard once spent a week inside his."

Seras was silent, thinking about Alucard. Strange that she would miss the creature that had shot a hole in her chest and made her a vampire on a whim, but he hadn't been so bad after all. She no longer needed his tutelage, but it still felt as though there was something missing with him gone.

"Sorry," Integra said. "I didn't mean to bring him up."

"No, it's fine," Seras said. "I don't suppose we can afford to mope." Nor could they afford to continue this line of discussion, as it would invariably lead to their other lost comrade, Walter. "I don't dare sleep that long anyhow. It might be what they're waiting for."

Integra smiled and shuffled the cards. "They've had ample opportunities to make their move and they haven't taken them. They'll play things straight with you, at least until we have that they want."

"Me? How do you mean?"

"How you manage to remain so suspicious and naïve at the same time mystifies me," Integra said. "Wesker needs one of Umbrella's science experiments captured. Out of the two of us, you're the one who can pick up and throw a truck. It's you they came calling on, not me. I highly doubt they even expected me to still be alive."

Seras picked up her cards, selected three, and set them down. Integra dealt her three more and slid four matches into the center of the table while the light above them flickered. "Which is why you aught to be worried," Seras said. "They don't need you, they don't care about you. They might even hold you hostage to ensure I cooperate."

Integra laid down all five of her cards and picked up another hand. "If it happens, it happens," Integra said. "Help them anyway. At least until a better option for salvaging humanity presents itself."

Seras huffed, not liking the look of her hand and slid five match sticks into the pile. "How low do you think we'll sink before the end?" Seras asked, looking at Integra. "I'm going to go see about getting their logo tattooed on my bum. Or better yet, my forehead." She slapped her cards down and stood up, sliding her chair back. Leaving the room without looking back, she hoped she'd run into someone in the corridor.

The ship they were on was thinly staffed and it was a lonely walk to her quarters where her coffin was kept. There was a cot next to it where Integra slept, neither wanting to be far from the other while onboard. Seras kicked the cot, knocking it askew and opened the lid on her portable grave.

"Everyone should have one of these," she muttered to herself. "Everyone's basically dead anyway, so why not?"

Lying wide awake, she glared at the inside of her coffin so hard she thought she might have actually nudged it a little. Breathing in a rhythm, she hoped she would either fall asleep or at least calm down soon.

***

Against her better judgment, Integra had gone walking around the ship. If anyone attempted to capture her, the 9mm holstered at her hip would have something to say about it. She wouldn't be taken alive, and whoever made a move on her would likely have a whiney, self-righteous, and angry vampire on their hands.

She knew that was unfair, but it seemed as though Seras still felt there was something to lose by working with Umbrella. Had there been, Integra thought she would certainly feel too scummy to have even heard Wesker out back at the lighthouse, but as it stood holding on to the grudge at this stage in the game was the greater sin.

The thought made Seras's words echo in her mind. How low would they have to sink before the end? Hellsing had already failed its mission to keep England safe from the undead, why should she continue to act as though there were a Hellsing? Did the name really mean anything anymore?

"A rose by any other name," she said, looking at a faded Umbrella logo on a crate as she walked into a storage room filled with pipes. This wasn't her first time about the ship, as the places she could get into were few and limited to the upper decks. No one had given her a tour before setting sail and no one had offered since. The skeleton crew moving about didn't speak to either her or Seras and there were no guards telling them off, just tightly locked doors.

Sitting on a crate out of sight, she leaned against the steel wall and hoped some crew members might come in and spill secrets. Umbrella was holding too many cards for her liking and would be nice if they tipped their hand a little.

While waiting, she came to the conclusion that she still believed in God. Her faith had wavered substantially recently, but the fact that she was still alive had steadied it. She might have to thank Umbrella for that, for while she had been putting up a brave front for Seras, her days laying about around the lighthouse were numbered.

Integra remembered thinking she must have committed some grave sin to have been allowed to survive the apocalypse. Perhaps using vampires to fight vampires had been it, although the previous Hellsing Masters hadn't suffered terribly grave ends.

Blaming one's self for the end of the world was a line of thinking that ended with a gun in the mouth, so she had done her best to stop it. There were plenty of other people to blame anyway, and blame she did whenever she had felt down on herself while Seras had been asleep in the lighthouse.

Now that she was on a boat headed towards America, with the intended goal to find a single woman, a genetic experiment gone AWOL, amongst millions of undead, she felt much, much better. There was a purpose to her life again, even though it was the equivalent of betting her very life, maybe even her soul, on one turn of the roulette wheel. This was it for her, she knew. If she lived to see the end of it, there had to be something beyond living alone with Seras on the run from zombies.

An odd sound strumming through the pipes made her snap her head up and realize that she had been dozing off while ruminating on her life. Concentrating, she thought she heard gunfire.

"What in blazes," she said, standing up on the crate and putting her ear on the pipe. It was most certainly gunfire, along with another muffled sound, one she had grown rather tired of hearing.

She jumped down and began running almost at the same time red lights came on in the corridors. Rounding a corner, she found herself behind a black man in a white jumpsuit, one of the skeleton crew. He turned when he heard her and nearly fell over backward. "Jesus," he said in a London accent. "Scared the hell out of me."

Sweat covered his face and his eyes were wide. He was about to say something when a dull alarm began to bleat a mechanical sound, followed by a monotone female voice. Warning. Biohazard containment breach on sub-deck four. Initiating lockdown procedure.

Integra grabbed the man by the should and drew her gun, keeping it pointed at the floor. "What does that mean?" she asked.

He seemed ready to run, but took a deep breath and thought better of it. "Uh, I think it means we're all going to die. Normally, I'd be heading towards a lifeboat right now, but no one's going to come pick us up, so…"

She shook him. "What's this ship carrying?"

With a broad, manic grin on his face he shook his head slowly. "Lady, I don't know and I don't care. I'm going to go find myself a nice rope to hang myself with and I suggest you get your own."

Shrugging roughly, he shook her off and went running down the corridor. She went after him but turned to the left after a few meters and headed back to her and Seras's room. If it happened to be the airborne T-virus, she wanted to be shot straight away. If it was something else, and she suspected it might be, she had a fighting chance with Seras at her back.

**To be continued…**


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

**Chapter Five.**

Seras found herself sitting on a throne made up of bleached human bones overlooking a beach made of the same material. The ocean before was blood and it lapped at the bone beach steadily while the sun, glossed over with the Umbrella logo, set on the horizon.

"You really screwed the pooch," a fat man sitting on an oversized skull said. "Yep, you really biffed this one."

"Shut up," Seras said. "Some help you were in the end."

"It's not the end, and you know it," he said. "I can still help."

"Well it won't be for a while yet," she said. "We're still on that bloody awful boat and you're still in your crate. I'll shoot you as soon as I get a chance."

A grin came over his face, hidden slightly by the fat on his cheeks. "It is a _bloody_ awful boat, isn't it? Very _bloody_ indeed. Try not to blow a hole in the bottom and sink the hole _bloody_ mess, will 'ya?"

She got up off her throne and realized she was in a very tiny bikini. "You…" she scolded, picking up a femur and slipping into a pair of flip flops. "I'll teach you to give me dreams like these."

"Seras, wake up." Integra's voice boomed from the sky and the boned shifted, letting her sink into them. She blinked and saw Integra's face, looking down on her back lighted in dull red while an alarm blared. "Get up, Seras, we've got problems."

"What is it?" Seras was up and out of the coffin and looking for her machete. Her Harkonnen cannon was in its carrying case leaning against the wall and she went over to it, unsure about the need to use it.

"A biohazard outbreak on sub-deck four," Integra said. "I have no idea what the hell that could mean, but I did hear gunfire and screaming. I think something's loose."

"What?" Seras said, her mouth agape. "Dear God, it's like a running joke with these people."

Integra was about to lay down her plans when a familiar voice came over the intercom. "Would Integra Hellsing and Seras Victoria please report to the bridge," Wesker said over the ship's intercom. "Now."

"Who the blazes does he think he is?" Seras said.

"He'll know what's going on," Integra said. "Lets go."

Biting her tongue, Seras grabbed the cannon's carrying case along with a box of shells and followed Integra through the red, blaring corridors towards the bridge. They didn't meet anyone on their way to the ship's bridge, but Seras thought she smelled blood coming from one of the rooms they passed.

On the bridge, there were twelve sailors huddled together near the bow. All of them were carrying rifles they had raised when Integra and Seras came in, but lowered them upon seeing the two women. "Where's Wesker?" Integra asked.

The ranking officer stepped forward. A man in his mid-forties, his beard was graying faster than it should have. "He's not on board. He's hooked up to that terminal over there."

"Figures," Seras said. "I'll give you three guesses as to who's fault this is."

Integra said nothing and went to the bridge's communication terminal and pushed a button after picking up a headset. "Wesker," she said. "We're at the bridge. Explain yourself."

"I'm afraid there's been a bit of an accident," Wesker said. "With our limited resources, not all of our equipment gets the servicing it needs to remain free of errors."

"You're all incompetent. We were already aware of that, Wesker. No one is really surprised here, we're just a little clueless as to the exact nature of the problem."

Seras looked over at the sailors who had taken up defensive positions at the other end of the room. All of them looked to be officers of some sort and perhaps had been aware that it was a monster on the loose, not an airborne virus. Had they bothered to let their subordinates know? Likely not. If she got scuffed up by Umbrella's pet, she decided it would be one of them she fed off.

"The problem is fairly straightforward," Wesker said. "The Tyrant Retriever on that boat was let out of its containment vessel without any programming. Without programming, it will wander around and kill whatever crosses its path. The boat is on lockdown, meaning the doors to the sub-decks are locked and the boat itself has stopped moving. Your task is to neutralize the Tyrant and deactivate the lock, which can only be done from a point on the sub-decks where the outbreak occurred."

Integra looked at Seras's cannon case and rolled her eyes. "Easy enough. And for the record, I'm not convinced this was an accident. I can't fathom your reasons for doing this, but this is a big demerit for you and one you certainly can't afford."

There was a long silence from Wesker. Both Integra and Seras looked at one another, wondering what it might mean. "I'm sure the evidence will speak for itself once you're down there. One more thing," Wesker said. "Unless the security cameras are deceiving me, your plan seems to be to shoot the creature with that cannon, yes?"

Seras patted the case and smiled up at one of the cameras. "I haven't gotten to shoot it in a while," she said. "I'm looking forward to it."

"I think now would be a good time to inform you that the vessel you're on is barely seaworthy as it is. It's a much older ship than it looks, and a stray artillery round going off inside it is liable to sink it."

Seras laughed, noticing Integra was also sporting a tiny smirk. She was about to mouth-off once more when a crewman spoke up. "He's not playing," a pale, thin faced man said. "This tub aught to be scuttled. What it's doing making a transatlantic voyage with passengers and monsters is anybody's guess."

Integra clenched her fist and spun around in the swivel chair to face Seras. "This is all they could muster to send us to the states," she said. "A leaky boat with mutant rat problem. They're falling apart, Seras."

"And that makes them trustworthy?" Seras said.

"Pardon me," Wesker said. "But if you opt not to sink yourselves with that artillery piece you carry, there is another option. Near the creature's holding tank is a red box containing a large syringe. It's idiot proof and contains a large enough dose of a special kind of tranquilizer to kill roughly a dozen elephants. Inject the creature anywhere on its body, although the heart is preferable, and it will become comatose."

Without saying anything, Seras left the room and headed down the stairs on her way to the sub-decks. She thumped the side of the wall with her fist, leaving a small dent. Part of her knew Wesker had let the monster go via remote. Their scuffle at the lighthouse must not have been satisfactory evidence of her combat abilities and this was some sort of insane test. The ship was likely able to take four or five of her Harkonnen rounds, but Wesker had duped everyone into thinking otherwise, including Sir Integra.

She hoped wherever they landed in America was nice, as the thought of helping Umbrella any further was not on her agenda any longer. The whole situation on the boat was just too convenient, just too like Umbrella.

Coming to a locked door, she tore it off its hinges and sent it flying down the hall, bent in the middle. She changed her mind. There was no one in the world she wanted to speak with more than this Alice person. Alice would know something about Umbrella's inner workings and Alice was likely to hate Umbrella like a normal person should. Maybe together they could take over a research installation and force the scientists there to make a cure or a vaccine. A real one they could give to everybody, not just surviving Umbrella executives.

After going down a few more levels, she stopped in the middle of a hallway and ceased her musings. Instead of a locked door at the end of the hall, there was a large humanoid shape blocking the red light from behind. It turned slowly, making her realize its back had facing her. Now she could see through the gloom its pale skin, the red pulsing tumor that was its heart in the center of its chest, and the permanent grin stuck to its face by a lipless mouth.

She backed up to the door she had punched open and tore it off its hinges. The hallway was high and long, but not wide. None of them were, and of the creature charged there was no way around it. Holding the door in front of her like a shield, she ran forward.

Slamming into the creature, she lowered her center of gravity and pushed hard. It was incredibly strong and heavy and she had to exert herself to push the monster back into the large room it had come from. Once in the room, she slid around to the monster's side and nimbly danced out of the way as it swung its fist at her.

The attack was slow and deliberate, and she realized there must be something wrong with the monster. The giant tank lying broken on its side explained it. Fluid covered the floor and bizarre instruments used to administer fluids intravenously laid trickling on the floor.

Seras spotted the red box on the floor next to the tank just as the creature put on a burst of speed she hadn't expected. Seras leapt forward, towards the box, as the creature took an upward swipe at her with its massive clawed hand. The tip caught her left shin and sliced it open deep into the bone, throwing off her jump and causing her flop hard onto the floor.

Wanting to avoid the use of tricks to conserve blood, she reluctantly let her left arm dissolve into a pool of liquid shadow, which she sent streaking for the red box. The tendrils grasped it and pulled it in towards her, just as something massive and sharp stabbed through her back, pinning her to the floor.

She shrieked and felt the blood vessels and organs within her rupture, causing precious blood to spill into places it didn't belong, namely out of her and onto the floor. With the box in her solid right hand, she sent the shadowy around behind her and pierced the monsters with half a dozen shadowy spears.

The creature didn't bellow in anger or pain, in merely drove its own claws in deeper, forcing a gout of blood to well out of Seras's mouth. With an angry yell, she shoved the monster backward, causing the claws to come out of her and release even more blood to mix with the dubious fluids on the floor.

Keeping her left arm a wall of stabbing spines, she focused the rest of her efforts on healing her spinal column. The healing went quickly and once she was able to move her legs, she got the syringe out from the box.

Wesker had been right, the thing looked idiot proof. It was also comically big and she wondered if any researcher would seriously have thought to use such a thing on an escaped Tyrant.

She dropped her shadowy wall and streamlined it into a long, scythe-like whip. Holding the syringe in her normal hand, she thought she might wait for the monster to charge her once so she could stick the thing in as it went by, like a matador fighting a bull.

Another, better idea occurred to her, as the monster swung at her shadow arm with its normal fist. Shaping the shadow of her arm into something resembling an apple corer, she stabbed the monster through the chest, over its heart and yanked backward taking the organ out along with a chunk of the thing's flesh.

It fell to its knees as black blood flooded forth from the hole in its chest. With a loud, wet flop it landed on its face, dead. Looking at the syringe, she slid it discretely into a pouch on her belt and took one last look at the Tyrant's holding tank. It looked as though a rusty bolt had snapped near the top. Just to be sure, she examined the severed bolt.

She knew the difference between torn and cut, and thought she should go and apologize to Integra. Not before something to eat and a long shower, though.

**To be continued…**


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six.**

Most of the Tyrant's carnage had occurred on the other end of the ship, opposite the one Seras had come down. With no one to kill in the immediate area, the creature had been minding its own business until Seras had showed up.

Wesker had been slightly curious about the creature's habits when not murdering something or looking for something to murder. He suspected, that if left alone, the thing would likely stand in one place indefinitely or perhaps move to investigate life-like movements. He would never know, as the opportunity to observe one in such a fashion would likely never present itself again.

A much more interesting display had come from the vampire woman herself. How she had transformed her arm and regenerated so quickly was a mystery Wesker wanted to solve, but like the Tyrant's day-to-day habits, was low on his list of priorities.

"What did we lose?" Wesker said to a monitor showing the face of the ship's captain.

"We have everything we need to reach our destination," the captain said. "But no return trip. We haven't the supplies. As for the weird stuff bellow decks, that's all trashed. Your men, including the gunmen, are all dead. Three of my sailors committed suicide, one not an hour ago, _after_ the mess was settled."

"I take it morale is low?" Wesker said.

"Low? Ha. We've set new standards, sir," he said.

"Tell them they're on a mission to find a vaccine and a cure, but don't give them details," Wesker said.

"No one's given me details, so I can't see as to how I'd…"

"If you can reach your destination then that's all I need to know," Wesker said. "The facility you'll be linking up with doesn't have enough supplies to restock you, so plan on foraging should you seek a return voyage."

"Right," the captain said. "We'll forage all right."

Wesker terminated the link. He knew his bedside manner needed some work, but his DNA simply didn't seem to care. Intellectually he knew desperate and demoralized people were unpredictable, more so than normal people, but emotionally he couldn't sense how to respond. Knowing they were after a cure would help them a little, but he couldn't help but feel he should've presented it better.

"You're not worried they'll mutiny?" a thickly muscled man wearing a tight green shirt and a red beret said as he sat at the other end of the long table.

"If they do, the two women on board will handle them. I can tell them how to sail the ship from here, if need be," Wesker said.

"And if the communication lines go out, then what?"

Wesker sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Jack Krauser could be irritating, but he was one of the few people left who could question Wesker and get away with it. Wesker knew he needed someone like that, but it was still annoying. "Then we go ourselves," he said. "We'll likely end up with a dead specimen, but that's better than nothing."

Krauser drew his knife and began tossing it high into the air, catching it by the handle with deft ease. "I still say we junk this science crap and do this the old fashioned way. We've got enough personnel and resources to pull everyone into one place and mount a defense. With some planning, we could off millions of them systematically."

"That would certainly take care of the zombie infestation," Wesker said. "But what do you propose to do about the thousands of T-virus mutants on the loose? Are a bunch of gun-toting scientists-turned-militia going to shoot a grub the size of a school bus? What we need to do is manufacture a method of turning our remaining personnel into creatures like Alice so they can survive in this new ecology."

Krauser smiled and sheathed his knife. "You're a great humanitarian, Wesker," he said. "Although I never thought the new world order would look quite like this."

Wesker thought briefly of Alexia Ashford, and realized his current plan had come to resemble something akin to hers, although what she had in mind was, at its core, something different completely. "I'm beginning to think order is a relative term," Wesker said.

Krauser frowned, the cold blue eyes in his head and scar down his face made it an intimidating sight, for most people at least. "Chaos is just a word to describe being out of control," Krauser said. "You know that. We can steer our destiny in any direction we want once we're in a position to do so. We let things slip, now all we have to do is regain control and from then on, we go where we want."

Wesker nodded, in no mood for a philosophical argument with the single-minded Krauser. To look at it, piloting Umbrella, and the world, towards its perfect destiny had been not unlike sliding down a hill. He had control over how fast things went and which direction he could go from side to side, but one constant was that everything had been going downhill. The closer he got the bottom, the more his conception of what the bottom looked like shifted, and not all of it was to his liking.

"I'm getting the distinct impression our presence will be needed in North America. We can go by plane, as we won't be bringing a Tyrant with us," Wesker said.

"Why did you send that damned thing to begin with?" Krauser asked.

"I thought it might come in handy and it would save sending another boat in case one was needed."

"Don't they have a few on ice stateside?" Krauser asked.

"Those are special models, so to speak," Wesker said. "The one on the boat was an early version and taking up space here."

"There's a roomful of crates that need stacking. We couldn't have programmed it to do that for us? Save some energy?"

It was Wesker's turn to smile. "Tyrants are no good for such tasks," he said. "The instant it perceived some sort of obstacle to its work, it would attack. It would be like using an attack Doberman to try and herd sheep."

Krauser still appeared skeptical. He stood up and stepped away from the table without bothering to push his chair back in. Facing away from Wesker, he stood with his arms crossed. "We should just go and capture her ourselves. This is getting too complicated, and if there's one thing I've noticed about this company, it's that all of its failures have one thing in common: things got too complicated."

Wesker's eyes rolled behind his sunglasses. What Krauser didn't understand was that caution often demanded complexity. "We need to ensure a solution is obtained from Alice. The best way to do that is to have her alive and cooperative. The two we've sent are the best candidates for bringing her over."

"And if they all turn against us?" Krauser said.

"Then I've misjudged their characters," Wesker said.

**To be continued…**


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven.**

Integra had insisted on being allowed to walk around the entire ship before they got going again. With the security team having been killed by the Tyrant, no one argued with her, especially not with Seras backing her.

"I doubt there are any other surprises on board, but I'm through giving Umbrella the benefit of the doubt," Integra said.

They found nothing else on the ship and Seras hadn't been shy about ripping open locked doors and prying open suspicious crates. While what they found certainly would have raised the eyebrows of customs officials, back when there were customs officials, none of it was anything that would come to life and kill them.

Both Integra and Seras armed themselves by scavenging from the dead Umbrella soldiers. Both now carried M4 assault rifles with several clips apiece, and Integra had commandeered a combat knife. The sailors had seemed nervous about them having such weapons, but again, they met no argument.

One afternoon there was a knock on the door of their quarters. Integra answered and saw that it was the first mate. "The captain wants me to tell you we'll be making port at 8 p.m. Someone will come around to get her…coffin."

"I'll probably stash the coffin somewhere before we leave for the Midwest. I can't imagine dragging it all over the States," Seras said once the first mate had left.

"They're not using military time," Integra said. "That's not a good sign."

"I think we've gathered enough evidence to safely say Umbrella is losing it," Seras said, fingering the stitches where the Tyrant ripped her uniform.

They hadn't taken much with them, so prepping for their departure went quickly. The ship didn't dock until 9 p.m., so Seras and Integra had some time to ponder the state of the shore.

The Umbrella dock facility was as black and bleak as the rest of the heavily industrialized shoreline. It was also one of the few intact structures, as fires had raised many a building along the shore and in all probability, much of the city behind it. There were a few lights near the port and some in the one of the buildings, but all else was dark.

"I can hear them," Seras said. "That whole place is swarming with zombies."

A concrete wall backed by a chain link fence looked to have the dock facility surrounded on land. Seras squinted and saw that what she had first taken to be a mound of earth surrounding the fence was actually a seething pile of rotten bodies.

"I hear that's a new addition," a lanky sailor said as he stood next to them. "We was told to expect this. I guess they showed up two or so days ago. A mega-swarm, they call it."

"How long before the base is compromised?" Integra asked.

"Eh? There's a fence," the sailor said.

Seras said nothing and neither did Integra. Mega-swarm was a buzzword of sorts both of them had heard from officials back when the good fight was still being fought in earnest. Zombies, it seemed, had a tendency to gather in packs. The groups kept getting larger; the largest being found in places like China and India. There was no stopping a mega-swarm. The bodies could pile over any barricade given time, no matter how high. Not everyone had been given this information it seemed.

When the gangplank was finally extended and they disembarked, they were met by a lone man wearing a suit. The sailors filed past, two dropping Seras's coffin next to her, while the man extended a black gloved hand towards Integra.

"You must be Integra Hellsing," he said. His face was pale, his nose long, and his hair was beetle black and combed back over his head. "My name is Robert Lazarus."

"Lazarus?" Seras asked.

"Yes," he said, smiling. "Who really cares what my name is? I like it. Seras Victoria?"

Seras shrugged.

"Right then," Robert continued. "It's not at all wise for us to speak out here, so perhaps you would like to follow me inside?"

Seras looked at her coffin, then to Integra. She heaved the heavy gun case over to Integra and picked up her coffin as though it weighed nothing. Robert made no move to help nor did he seem in a position to tell anyone else to. They followed him into the facility and down a long concrete hallway that smelled like motor oil and fish, into a small office.

The room was completely trashed. The walls were yellow from cigarette smoke and there was a coffee stain on some folders lying on a table that Seras was sure was a year old if it was a day. The cup it spilled from was still lying nearby.

Seras leaned her coffin up against the wall and Integra set the cannon down on the floor. Robert Lazarus moved to the other side of the room facing away from them with his hands in his pockets. Finding nothing to open or otherwise do, he turned back around. "You'll pardon the state of the place," he said. "But tiding up after two days ago seemed silly."

"How long before that swarm topples the barricade?" Integra asked.

"A few hours," Robert said. "Maybe more. It depends on whether the dock master sees fit to take measures in order to thin their numbers, buying us a little time." Something in his pocket vibrated and he pulled his cell phone from his pants. "Sorry, urgent. Yes? I see…when? How? Alright…go ahead and do what we talked about earlier. No, the other thing. Yes. Bye. Sorry, again."

Integra sighed. "Who's the dock master? How much do you know about our mission?"

Robert wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. "The dock master is now me. The old one has apparently hung himself in his, my, office. As to your mission, I've been fully briefed by Mr. Wesker himself. We need to get you to Nevada so you can locate Project Alice."

"How…" Integra began but was interrupted.

Robert, his forefinger in the air, said "Try not to interrupt. There's a vehicle specially designed to transport you all the way to Nevada, past infested zones. It's decked out with the latest in technological advancements. GPS, fuel conservation, weaponry, the works. The only problem…"

Integra pulled her sidearm and fired into the microwaves slightly off to Robert's left. He flinched, but otherwise wasn't startled. "Talk down to me again you miserable Umbrella toad, and the zombies won't even want to eat you once I'm through. I've had about enough of being treated like an Umbrella employee."

Seras smiled and only wished this Robert Lazarus was a little more afraid of death than he was letting on. He nodded calmly. "My apologies. I understand your history with us is checkered." He swallowed hard. "As I was saying, the only problem is that the vehicle isn't quite ready to go just yet. It needs some fine tuning to the engine before we can be reasonably sure it will take you to your destination.

"And how long will this fine tuning take?" Integra asked.

"By the time they're finished, the technicians working on it will have cause to be getting a little anxious. No one bellow a certain rank in this place is fully aware of the danger we're in. We're keeping it that way, as space on that vehicle is extremely limited."

Seras was no longer smiling, and didn't think she would have cause to do so again for a while yet. "I hate to ask, but how likely is it that everyone in this facility will be in a position to escape before it's overrun?"

Robert ran a gloved finger over his collar and strained his tie. "Some will be leaving on a boat. A very poorly supplied boat with no place to go. Others are going to have to figure something out in a hurry."

"Good God," Seras said.

"God, yes…" Robert said. "In any case, I think it's best you follow me to the motor pool. You'll be leaving as soon as possible directly from there. On a good note, I think you'll like the people we're sending with you. They've been trained to operate the vehicle's many functions and serve in any capacity you might need."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Seras asked.

"There's a freezer with as many blood packets as could be spared onboard," Robert said. "Although I'd save it as a last resort were I you."

"I'm sure you would," Seras said.

"Let's go," he said. They followed him out of the room, this time with Seras carrying both pieces of her luggage under each arm. With possible space for her coffin, she didn't want to be without it if she could help it.

As they went, Robert continued to talk about the machine's capabilities. They would be able to contact Wesker when they needed to, provided satellite linkups held out, and would have enough fuel to make it to Nevada provided they had at least one luck break when it came to foraging.

Seras saw it through the dirty window of the motor pool. It was the size of a large tour bus, only wider and built more like an armored car or a tank. It had small windows covered by mesh, a plow on the front for pushing aside bodies and debris, along with some of the thickest tires she had ever seen. Working around it were four men in filthy white coveralls.

Robert led them into the motor pool via a red steel door and down a short flight of metal stairs. Seras nearly dropped her coffin and gun when she saw the three people waiting patiently by a trash barrel next to duffel bags.

All three were dressed in UBCS uniforms with the logos torn off. Seras couldn't picture Leon Kennedy, Jill Valentine, or, she had to blink to make sure, Ashley Graham wearing such insignias for very long voluntarily.

"Your crew," Robert said, gesturing dramatically. Seras ignored him and set down her things. She moved over to them slowly, but picked up the pace seeing the smiles on their haggard faces.

They stopped just short of having a group hug. "I'm glad you're all…"

"Alive," Jill finished. "Some days I don't believe it myself."

"Do you know what happened to Carlos?" Seras asked.

Jill shook her head. "We lost contact."

Seras kept looking at all three of them, and they her. Seeing them again had been so unlikely she hadn't even had to give up hope, it was never even a consideration. Seeing the three of them again in one place, especially that place, was surreal. "How did…"

"We'll each explain," Leon said. "If things go right, we'll have some long hours on the road where we can talk."

"And if we go wrong…" Ashley said quietly, casting a sideways glance at the working technicians.

Integra and Robert had walked over, putting a slight dampening on the reunion. "I'm thinking it might be prudent to load your things and get ready," Robert said. "These men are all set, but should anyone come down here…I don't think any of you want to be in a position to tell them there's no room.

Seras watched the disdain appear over her three friends' faces as Robert spoke. She didn't need further reason not to like the man, but took it all the same. "Mr. Kennedy, Ms. Valentine, and Ms. Graham here have all been fully briefed on the departure plans, so I'll leave you now."

Robert Lazar left abruptly, leaving an awkward silence between the five. "Well let's load our things," Integra finally said. "I'm sure Seras will make the appropriate introductions once we're settled."

Seras thought she could hear distant gunfire through the ceiling, but by the looks of it, she was the only one.

**To be continued…**


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight.**

The mechanics finished working and left the motor pool immediately without saying anything. The only way Seras knew they had finished was from the sound of the vehicle's hood shutting.

"That's our cue," Leon said, turning something near the wheel, starting the machine. He shifted it into gear and drove forward, towards the closed metal shutter.

"Is that supposed to open?" Seras asked, looking over Leon's shoulder through the small windshield.

"Yes," Leon said, plowing into the door. It tore and crumpled like it was made of tinfoil. The vehicle pushed through it and out into the night air. Leon remembered to turn the head lights on, illuminating a short stretch of concrete surrounded on both sides by a chain link fence. Ahead of them was the main fence that encircled the facility. It was twenty feet high, twelve of those feet was backed by a pile of squirming bodies.

"Are all the hatches locked?" Leon asked.

Jill was sitting in a chair in front of a monitor on the vehicles right-hand side. She tapped a few keys and looked around the cabin. "The computer says we're tight. I can't see anything open."

Seras looked over at Integra who was standing by the side door hanging onto a pole for support. She was looking around the small cabin, seemingly impressed. There was bunk space in the back, a bathroom area past that, near a pantry, and a small living area crammed with computers and other pieces of equipment. A ladder in the center of the living area lead up to a hatch, which Integra took a look at, likely to make sure it was closed.

Leon gave the machine some gas and shifted, heading for the fence as fast as he could. "Will those windows hold?" Seras asked.

"Umbrella made it, so…who knows," Leon said.

"This is going to be gross," Ashley, who was sitting in the passenger seat in front of a computer monitor with a joystick in front of it. "Are you sure we should use the gu…"

Leon didn't let her finish. He pressed the pedal to the floor and shifted again, crashing into the fence as fast as the short run-up would let him. Seras hadn't been holding onto anything and was sent falling into her buttocks with a thud. She got up, using the back of Leon's seat for support.

The windshield had become blocked completely by corpses. All were grey or black with ruined clothes. Time and the effects of the t-virus had erased their genders and racial features, making them all seem as one race other than human.

The bodies fell off the windshield and the going became easier for the vehicle as it cleared the area with the most buildup. Leon found the street he wanted to be on and maneuvered the unwieldy machine around corners, plowing through rubble, ruined barricades, and small groups of zombies.

"Ashley," Leon said. "I'm lost."

"Oh, right," she said, tapping buttons on her keyboard after setting the joystick down. Seras saw that she was pulling up three sets of maps. A topographical one, a street map, and what looked to be a satellite photo. The one from the satellite flickered every few seconds and wasn't terribly clear.

"They'll be busy until we reach the highway, or at least what's left of it," Jill said. "Hopefully the three left on the roof will fall off and we won't have to deal with them ourselves."

Seras walked back to a seat near Jill and sat while Integra remained standing. "This is…nice," Seras said, looking around the cabin.

Jill gave a half smile and shrugged. "It's a complicated machine built by Umbrella. I don't trust it."

Seras smiled back. "It beats walking. Oh, this is Sir Integra in case you hadn't guessed." Jill and Integra exchanged nods. "I think she's pieced out who you three are."

"It's too bad we had to all meet like this," Jill said. "Do you think this Alice person will go along with us?"

"Umbrella convinced the five of us to work with them. I can't imagine her being more stubborn and hateful towards Umbrella than we are," Seras said. "I still want to know how you three came to be here."

"We're a long way from Nevada," Integra said, walking up to the front of vehicle and looked through the windshield, using the back of Leon's chair to keep standing. "I'm sure there will be plenty of time for stories. Nevada is also quite large. I'm guessing we'll have a time finding this woman, assuming we make the journey."

Seras scratched the back of her head and watched Integra leaning over Leon's chair, looking at the road in front of them and down at their instruments. Integra was sounding more like her old self now that there was a mission to accomplish. What Seras feared now was a power struggle. Integra would naturally begin telling people what to do. Jill and Ashley, at least for as long as Seras had known them, weren't the types to care much, but Leon was another matter.

"That Wesker guy says he has a way of tracking her, sort of," Ashley said. "I guess she's…psychic or something. Leon, take a left here."

The vehicle turned left, hard, smashing through what sounded like a car and something wooden. It occurred to Seras that she didn't even know what city they were in. She decided she didn't want to know and took her eyes off the windshield. The bleak buildings illuminated in the headlights weren't things she wanted to look at.

"What do we need to be doing now?" Integra asked, to Seras's surprise.

"Sit tight," Leon said. "The satellites have a few possible routes mapped out for us. This thing can plow through most anything and has got gas mileage like you wouldn't believe."

Integra nodded but didn't move. Seras didn't expect her to. Sitting tight wasn't something Integra was used to doing. Seras sat back and closed her eyes, letting her mind wander. She pictured the inside of the vehicle, then the space between the walls. After that she envisioned the hull outside. Jill had been right about the three clingers. They had death grips on the roof, perhaps unaware of what was happening. Beyond that was the lifeless street, passing by like a river.

Death and menace were all around them, but the machine was humming like it was supposed to and there seemed to be a kind of flow to Ashley's directions. Seras hated to do it, but she let out a breath and allowed herself to feel safe. She couldn't read the future, not really, but for the first time in a long time she could find no immediate cause to worry. The sensation was tarnished only by the guilt of letting her guard down and Leon's earlier words. Umbrella had built this machine and any product of Umbrella was suspect.

That thought made her wonder. She wouldn't voice it out loud, not inside the vehicle itself, but later she would have to bring it up. If the machine was as self-sustaining as they had been led to believe, the temptation to simply say to hell with Project Alice and live out the rest of their days perusing other schemes was certainly there. Every Umbrella base Seras had ever heard about had been rigged to explode should things go to hell in a hand basket, so why not this little tour bus containing five of the companies (she decided to count Ashley) longtime enemies?

She couldn't sense a bomb, but impending doom in the form of gnashing, virus ridden teeth all around them, she might not be able to tell. The vehicle was likely bugged at the very least.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Jill asked, nudging Sera's elbow.

Seras looked at her without turning her head much. "I think I am. Not much we can do about it."

"I'm going to give the toilet a good looking over before I use it," Jill said. "That Lazarus guy looked like a creep."

Seras laughed. "Integra almost shot him."

"My aim was off," Integra said. "I'm sure he could have briefed us well enough with a bullet in his stomach."

They all laughed. It wasn't much of a joke, Seras thought, but it met the new world standard of what was funny.

**To be continued…**


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine.**

The fact that Jill, Leon, and Ashley had all been sent to man the vehicle (which they were now calling The Bus) was largely a matter of timing. "The only places safe for anyone to run to were Umbrella facilities," Jill said, turning in her seat to face Seras and Integra.

"I thought Umbrella had gone kaput," Ashley has chimed in from her seat next to Leon. They had found the highway they wanted easily enough but it was blocked by cars, and pushing through them was slow work.

"You'd think killing the Board of Directors and freezing all of the company's assets would have done the trick," Leon said.

Seras sighed, another failure.

Jill continued her side of the story, telling how she had become separated from the rest of the STARS members after the place they had been living in was finally found by zombies and overrun. "We couldn't have stayed there much longer anyway. Food was giving out. It was an old bomb shelter of some kind."

She had looked for the other STARS, but the zombies made it difficult. "Impossible I should say," Jill said. Jill had then made her way south, moving by day when she could spot zombies the easiest and avoid them. She was picked up by an Umbrella scavenging team while on the outskirts of the city.

"I wasn't sure who they were at first," Jill said. "By the time I found out, they knew who I was as well and then I went from being a refugee to a prisoner."

Some surviving Umbrella executives still had a sore spot when it came to the STARS, especially Jill Valentine. Locked in a cell for a few weeks, she was told she would either be disposed of, used for breeding purposes, or saved as an emergency food ration.

"Say that again?" Seras said.

"I think they were playing mind games with me," Jill said. "But things were getting pretty bad where we just left."

"I'll say. That's horrible even if it was just a mind game," Seras said, thinking of the parts of England where food had been especially hard to come by. Bands of starving humans could be more dangerous than a horde of zombies.

"Then, out of the blue, they tell me they're going to train me to operate a special anti-infestation transport vehicle," Jill said, continuing. She had been given fresh clothes, a bath, and a meal, then introduced to Leon and Ashley.

"Small world," Seras said.

It hadn't taken them long to piece out the connections between one another. When they were told what they were going to do and who they were going to do it with, there hadn't been much to say. "It's strange," Jill said, "that the five of us would be alive and get together like this."

Seras had been thinking the same thing. When her dreams weren't being stupid, they were often quite vivid and difficult to distinguish from reality. Confusion really set in when she dreamed about something mundane, like Walter telling her she needed to clear out her room so it could be painted. She had done just that, only to find he had said no such thing and that it had all been a dream.

As surreal as their reunion was, she didn't think it was a dream, although Robert Lazarus had resembled Walter somewhat. In the end, she decided she would call humbug on the whole thing if and when she saw Sherry Birkin make an appearance.

"So how did Leon and Ashley wind up here?" Seras asked.

"My turn," Ashley said, getting up. "Jill, you're on map."

Jill smiled and got up, switching seats with Ashley.

"So they assigned Leon to guard me full time after what happened, right?" Ashley began. Leon had remained as her personal bodyguard, even into President Graham's second term and despite the growing attention they were getting in the press. "You wouldn't believe the crap they printed about me and Leon," Ashley said.

Seras laughed, remembering what the tabloids and even what the big newspapers had printed. It had made her all too glad that Leon had gotten the credit for rescuing Ashley from Los Illuminados.

"So after my dad left office, Leon stayed on as my bodyguard which, of course, led to more stuff in the press." Seras nodded as Ashley spoke. Scanning the girl's face and reading what was behind them, she thought Ashley was making a point to denounce what the tabloids had said about the relationship between her and Leon.

After things began to get bad, they weren't shunted off to some base beneath a mountain. Graham had lost that particular perk when he stopped being president. The next best thing had been his ranch in Carolina. It ended up being overrun as the people hired to protect it had more pressing matters to attend to.

"So Leon pulled my but out of the fire _again,_" Ashley said. "Then we pretty much did what Jill did for a few years. We kept moving east, hiding when we could, running when we had to. I learned to shoot and stuff from Leon."

Her story mirrored Jill's from then on. They were picked up by Umbrella personnel out foraging, taken in, identified, and locked up. "I don't think they threatened to eat us though," Ashley said. "Just kill Leon and rape me."

Seras wondered what awful things Ashley had seen in her travels to make her talk in such a fashion. The façade she was putting up mirrored the Ashley Seras had known, but Seras saw something different underneath, something harder.

"This is all entirely too convenient," Integra said suddenly. There was a silence, followed by stairs from everyone not driving. Integra seemed to realize this. "Relax, I meant nothing by it. Umbrella isn't capable of orchestrating such a thing."

Seras's mind began poking at an idea, one she was afraid to latch onto lest it turn out to be stupid. Integra was right, Umbrella wasn't capable of having things come together in such a fashion. "Maybe it's karma," Seras settled on saying. "We've had such a run of foul luck, maybe the world thinks it owes us all a break."

She tapped the edge of her wooden coffin with her foot, praying she hadn't just jinxed them. The Bus was humming smoothly, pushing cars and junk off to the sides with its plow. Seras couldn't see the road, but felt that it had become a little uneven and worn. After a brief period of silence, the lights in the vehicle cut out along with the computer monitors and the engine. The Bus stopped moving.

"You're joking. For real?" Leon said in the darkness.

"You jinxed us, Seras," Ashley said.

Seras's jaw had dropped and she looked around the cabin for some sort of explanation. Her night vision enabled her to see just fine, but she could tell her human companions were completely blind as they remained still.

"Relax, people," Jill said. Getting a flashlight from her pocket and turning it on. "Remember that power cord on the bottom they told us about? It's probably that."

"This thing had a couple design flaws," Ashley said. "There's a cord underneath that they said might become disconnected of we went over something that got past the plow."

Biting her tongue and tapping her coffin with her foot, Seras nodded as the flashlight beam scanned the ceiling and then made its way onto the floor. Jill had gotten up and gone back towards the roof hatch. "We just have to go out and reconnect it," she said. "Hopefully we won't have to replace it completely."

"I'm going," Seras said, getting up. "You said there were three of them hanging out there, it's not safe."

"Do you know what you're looking for?" Jill asked.

"I'll come back in and ask if I'm confused," Seras said, suddenly feeling stupid and angry. "I'd like to insist on a rule: if anyone is to go outside to do anything, it's going to be me. There's no reason for anyone else to risk it."

"Alright," Jill said. "I wasn't really arguing."

"I'll be right back," Seras said, climbing up the ladder and opening the hatch. Her machete was sheathed at her side and she got up and out quickly, not knowing exactly where the stragglers were.

Once on the roof, she saw that they were near the back. Their clothing and flesh had become tangled into odd parts of The Bus's exterior. They hadn't been hanging on like Seras thought. She closed the hatch and dispatched the zombies, then shoved their lifeless forms off the roof.

Seras looked around The Bus, taking stock of the area. The plowed path they had made through the cars was easy to spot, as were the shuffling figures slowly making their way down towards The Bus, having been rousted from their prior routines.

Jumping down off The Bus, she got onto her stomach and looked for the loose cable. The concrete on the highway was cracked and uneven from the winters it had seen no maintenance. She saw the loose cable hanging near the center of The Bus and began crawling towards it.

Her chest made it a tight fit and she was glad she didn't need to keep air in her lungs. Wanting to be back on her feet before any zombies got close, she reached the cable and noticed what had disconnected it. A piece of rebar had stuck of out of the cracked concrete and caught it. Springy enough to bend back up after being pushed down by the plow, but stiff enough to unhook a cable, Seras wondered how many times she would find herself beneath The Bus, doing some such work on it while undead closed in.

Seeing that she hadn't jinxed them too much, as the cable had merely become unplugged and not severed, she reconnected it and heard the machine power up once more. Tucking the cable back in as best she could, which wasn't much, she slid back out from beneath The Bus and got up.

Two zombies had made their way to The Bus and she split their skulls with her machete easily, her attention focused more on the zombie near the guard rail. She could see it easily in the dark, but The Bus's sidelights kicked on, illuminating the thing.

It had crawled up the bank and made its way over the guard rail with far more grace than any zombie could ever have mustered. Its movements seemed to fall somewhere between catlike and apish, but Seras wasn't in the mood to make a distinction.

Its skin was crimson, perhaps from being covered in blood but nothing on it smelled fresh. Its scent was as stale as the other zombies that had been wandering for years. When the light caught its eyes, they glowed orange, something human eyes did not do.

She noticed the feral claws on its hands and that it was wearing a tattered business suit right before it hoped off the guardrail and bolted at her. She had seen zombies pour on a burst of speed, but nothing like this. It was fast, it was deliberate, and would have stood a good chance of ripping her to pieces had she not been faster.

Seras sidestepped it, waiting until it was a foot away from slashing at her. It ran past her, stopping before it hit the side of The Bus. Twisting into it, using her hips, she brought her machete down on the creature's neck at an angle, severing the head and right arm from the torso in one sideways chunk.

It fell to the ground and tried to right itself using its arm. Snarling and gnashing its teeth, Seras kicked it away from The Bus and into the light where should make out detail and color a little better.

"Seras, stop poking that thing and get back in here," Integra's voice said over a speaker. The Bus seemed full of handy features.

Noting the zombie's pointed teeth, she stuck her machete through its eye socket and climbed up to the top hatch after wiping her machete on its pant leg. With the weapon sheathed, she slipped down the hatch and closed it behind her. "A piece of rebar caught it," Seras said.

"Really," Leon said. "I foresee this routine getting old." He peered out the windshield at the cars blocking the rotting highway and sighed.

"Maybe we can fix it later, if we get a chance," Ashley said.

The Bus continued forward and Integra left Leon's shoulder to go over to where Seras now sat in the living area. "What was that thing out there?" Integra asked. "I saw it come up over the rail."

Shaking her head, Seras shrugged. "It looked like it started out as a zombie," she said. "We should ask that Wesker if and when he calls and hope they don't all stand to get like that."

**To be continued…**


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten.**

The first few days, night for Seras, in The Bus mainly consisted of Integra taking stock of their supplies, as she didn't trust any information that had been given to them regarding the matter.

As it happened, their supply cash _had_ been over-estimated. "Well, I think someone said we'd have to forage at least once," Ashley said.

"We need to start foraging now," Integra said, looking over her own list. "We'll be lucky if we reach Ohio with this. I can't even guess how poorly they judged the fuel consumption."

Seras had been sitting in the back living area, glad she wasn't a drain on their regular rations. Integra's stock-taking had raised a question in Seras's mind about her own food source. It didn't take the five of them to operate The Bus, although having a spare was a plus. While there were plenty of practical reasons for Umbrella to have trained three people to run it, Seras had the sneaking suspicion that at least one of them had been sent along for another, unspoken, purpose.

Opening an atlas, she found a large map of the United States to distract her. If her mind got on the subject she had been skirting, it might show on her face and sooner or later her human friends would be thinking about it as well. The map didn't comfort her in the slightest. Despite having been in America once before, her geographical sense of the place was a little off. It was a long way to where Alice was suspected to be, meaning there was plenty of time for bad things to happen.

Their first call from Wesker came during a downpour while heading down a fairly clear stretch of highway. Clear save for the zombies at least. Each one was following the other, making a chain all the way back to the city they had left.

The computer screen at the center of The Bus took the call as it was being manned by Jill. "Status report," he said.

"The food count is off," Jill said. "We'll have to risk foraging a lot more than you had estimated."

The screen was blank, only Wesker's voice was coming through. Seras resisted the urge to look around for the hidden cameras she felt sure were there, allowing Wesker to read their emotions while keeping his own face hidden.

"You'll have to deal with it," Wesker said. "You left before you were scheduled, so there are some added difficulties no one could foresee."

"What about the fuel?" Jill asked. "The meters say we're in good shape. Are they defective as well?"

"Not to my knowledge," Wesker said. "I'll remind you that you're far better off than you could be."

"And I'll remind you that we were essentially press-ganged into this insane scheme," Jill said.

As they bantered back and forth, Seras looked at Integra and wondered if they hadn't both made a mistake. Maybe there were better ways to spend their post-apocalypse days than this, ideas they hadn't thought of.

No, she decided, there weren't. Seras stopped musing to herself upon hearing Jill and Wesker argue about why they hadn't been flown into Nevada and were driving. It had something to do with The Bus being needed to find Alice, and there being no jet fuel to spare.

"None to spare?" Jill said. "We're supposed to be finding a cure for the T-virus and you can't spring for some jet fuel?"

"What little fuel we have on hand is…"

Seras had tuned out again. If Wesker had something vital to tell them, he would have mentioned it by now. With little else to do, Seras turned her mind to their first foraging trip. Most places had likely been picked clean, but she bet there would be a few houses with something extra, or maybe even a bomb shelter. She had always heard about paranoid Americans building shelters near their houses in case of the Armageddon, maybe they would be lucky and stumble across one.

"Well that was useless," Jill said.

Seras realized the conversation was over and looked up. "When the rain stops, I'm going to go sit on the roof and look for likely spots to go scavenging," Seras said.

"That might not be for a while," Leon said, looking up at the sky though the windshield.

"Four hours, give or take," Ashley said from the passengers seat. Her monitor showed what looked to be a weather radar map.

It was shaping up to be that her worst enemy was boredom. She tried losing herself in thought as The Bus rolled along, half wishing the cord beneath would come unplugged again and she would have something to do with herself.

Something landed on The Bus's hood, making Ashley scream. Seras looked to the front to see what had happened in time to spot something crawl up over the windshield and onto the roof. "What was that?" Jill said. Footsteps on the roof, belong to something with four legs, made their way down the length of The Bus.

"It looked like a…a licker but different," Leon said.

The image of the hideous licker creatures she had run across in Raccoon City flashed before Seras's mind. It occurred to her suddenly that they hadn't asked Wesker about the strange zombie they had encountered, but this was more pressing, as she suspected whatever had leapt into The Bus was still on the roof.

"I'll go kill it," Seras said, standing up. "You all stay here."

"Wait," Integra said. "Leon, keep driving. Seras, you don't know how many there are or what they're capable of."

Seras stopped, used to obeying Integra. The sound of the creature shifting on the roof could be heard in the cabin. Something thudded against the side as Jill began tapping on her keyboard, calling up images from the cameras mounted outside. "Look at this," Jill said.

The image was grainy and grey, the rain not helping much either. Clinging to the side of The Bus was what Seras thought was a giant eyeless frog with its limbs having the musculature of a human. The mouth on the monster seemed wide, making her wonder if concealed a long, lashing tongue or just sharp teeth. "Are there cameras on the roof?" Seras asked.

"The gun turret has a targeting camera. I could deploy it and shoot the one on the roof," Jill said.

"We might need the bullets later," Integra said. "We should wait until we need it."

The frog creature began thumping the side of The Bus and was followed by the one on the roof. Its feet had suction cups on them, but it seemed to be able to ball its front paw into a fist and use it as a bludgeon.

"What are they doing?" Ashley said. "They can't get in, can they?"

"No, but they can break sensor equipment we won't be able to fix," Leon said. "They're not falling off, so we might want to stop and take care of them."

Everyone except for Leon looked to Seras. "What? I said I wanted to go out and kill them," Seras said.

"Be careful," Integra said. "Leon, stop the vehicle."

"Aye, aye, Captain," Leon muttered, applying the break. The Bus slowed to a stop and the creature's began moving. The one from the side moved up on the roof and began pounding as if hoping the hull would crack open.

Seras kept the machete at her side but picked up one of the assault rifles she and Integra had taken from the dead Umbrella guards on the boat ride over from England. "Shut the door behind me," Seras said, "Opening it and jumping out into the highway in the rain.

She turned in time to see it shut and the two frog monsters clamor over and stop at the edge of The Bus's roof. They sat on their haunches like frogs and didn't move. Seras couldn't see any eyes on the creatures and wondered how they were able to see.

A moan caught her attention briefly and she realized there were at least a dozen zombies in the area where they had stopped. Only two were close enough to be a potential problem and so she didn't worry about them.

When her attention returned to the roof she saw that one frog creature was gone. "Quick little buggers," she said, aiming the rifle at the one remaining in view. She fired, puncturing its grey, pebbled skin. It backed away out of sight, not making a sound. "Missed the brain," she said, walking around towards the back of The Bus where she would be able to see them both better. She raised the rifle and fired at the two approaching zombies, downing them both.

Seras spotted the top of one of the monsters as it headed towards the front of The Bus. Neither had come down onto the ground and seemed to be hiding from her. Looking behind her to see how close the zombies were, she decided she could wait the frog monsters out for a little bit. If they didn't make their move soon, she decided to jump up to the roof where the only place for them to hide would be under the vehicle.

Something wet and sticky struck her hard in the shin, knocking her off balance. It tugged her leg forward, causing her to fall onto her back. Looking down at her leg, she saw that one of the creatures had crawled under The Bus and shot its long tongue out at her. Now she saw the width of its mouth and it was indeed lined with sharp teeth.

She fired into the mouth, this time hitting the brain and making the creature die. As it expired, it didn't retract its tongue. Instead, the sticky wad of pink flesh went limp and held tight to her leg. While reaching to draw her machete, she barely had time to throw her forearm up and catch the tongue of the second creature that had crawled out from around the right hand side.

It pulled her forearm away and began dragging her towards its mouth. Using her left hand, she awkwardly tried to shoot the creature, but the shot went wide and nearly hit The Bus's rear wheel. Thinking about the damage the creature's teeth would do to her and how hungry she would get from healing it, she started to become angry. Gritting her teeth she kept trying to draw a bead on the monster with her gun but it was shuffling from side to side and moving backwards, jerking her arm while the first monster's tongue was still hampering her leg.

Gunfire from the top of The Bus pelted the monster and made it stop moving. Seras looked up to see Integra holding her assault rifle. "Get inside, it's wet out here," Integra said, disappearing back down the roof hatch.

Using her machete to severe the tongues and pry them off her body, Seras got up before the few zombies that had been attracted by the commotion got near her. Wet and a little humiliated, she climbed up onto the roof and knocked on the hatch. It opened and she saw Integra standing at the bottom of the ladder back far enough to keep out of the rain. "I'm going to stay up here and keep a watch," Seras said. "I'm already soaked."

"I suppose you won't catch your death of a cold," Integra called back up. "Suit yourself."

Seras shut the hatch and checked her rifle. She took a seat on the top of the vehicle where she wouldn't fall as Leon began driving forward. With the rain on her face and the dead countryside to look at, she wondered where the frog creatures had come from, and what other sorts of mutants the T-virus had spawned in nature.

**To be continued…**


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven.**

Claire Redfield stood next to a tanker truck looking at a gauge. If it was broken, and she sincerely hoped that it was, then she might not be looking at the place where she was most likely going to die.

"What's the news?" a handsome Latino man said as he walked up behind her. He was dressed in a filthy pair of jeans and a long sleeved green shirt with a tattered Kevlar vest. Slung over his back was an AK-47 assault rifle.

Claire looked up to the top of the tanker. "I'm going to go up and look inside. If this gauge is right, we're looking at our last stand."

She climbed a rusty ladder to the top of the fuel tanker and went to the hatch on the top. She opened it and used a rod to prod the bottom of the tank. She knew it was useless, as she wasn't being overpowered by the stench of fumes. "Well?" the man said.

Claire climbed down before answering. "Bone dry," she said. "Now what?"

The man looked back at the dark yellow Hummer behind the tanker. "That's got half a tank left," he said. "Too bad we didn't find something with better mileage."

"We can't change what we've got," Claire said. "We've got food and water for a while. We could hole up over there maybe." She pointed to a nearby mesa, tracing her finger across her line of sight to outline what looked like a narrow little trail leading up the side. Carlos, the man, saw it to.

"That trail looks narrow," he said. "We could block it off pretty easily."

"What if that's the only way up? We'd be trapped."

"What if it's not? Then we'd be surrounded," Carlos said. "We ain't got a lot of options here."

Claire leaned against the dry tanker and crossed her arms, thinking. By nightfall, the first zombie would likely have made an appearance. It would be followed by more, and more, and more, provided the first hundred or so didn't kill them. Looking at the mesa, Claire saw it more and more as being a giant tombstone. A cap on the end of her journey.

The rear door on the Hummer opened and out stepped a blond woman wearing sunglasses. She was dressed like a Catholic priest who had seen better days and looked sweaty and annoyed. "Can we discuss this somewhere in the shade?" she said in a German accent. "We'll bake to death before the zombies have anything to say about it."

Claire looked up at the cloudless blue sky and wondered just where they were supposed to find shade. The woman who had gotten out of the Hummer was one of two. The other was a Japanese nun with a personality disorder. Claire had met them both in Antarctica, at one of Umbrella's facilities. Heinkel, the one complaining, was the more level-headed of the two.

The nun also exited the car and Claire was pleased to see she was wearing her spectacles and habit. That meant, out of the two personalities she had, Yumiko was the one in control. Yumiko was a calm, polite, sensible nun while Yumie, the other personality, was a murderous sociopath. Claire feared the heat might bring out the worst in Yumiko.

"We're out of gas," Claire said as the two walked over to the slight shade of the tanker. "We've what's in the Hummer and what's driving this rig here. It's not likely to get us far."

Heinkel looked to the mesa and rubbed her chin. She seemed to already be thinking what Claire and Carlos had been. "So we drive and hope to find fuel for another run, or we hold up on that cliff over there…obviously we must keep moving."

"What if we run out of gas on the highway before we find a station that isn't dry?" Carlos said. "We'll get swarmed."

No one said anything. All of them, even Carlos, was aware that the alternative was to die up on the mesa either by starvation or zombie attack. "You know what?" Carlos said. "To hell with it, let's just siphon the gas out of the big rig, fill the Hummer with it, and see how far we get."

They drew lots for siphoning duty, with Claire losing. She was spitting the taste of gasoline from her mouth when she looked down the road through the heat lines to see three black shapes shambling up over a hump in the road. Claire wasn't worried, but the sight depressed her all the same. They were always coming, no matter what. It was impossible to stop anywhere for more than two days without seeing one. One always became two, then three, and so on before it was time to put miles between them and the zombies before they formed a swarm.

Without a vehicle, forced to carry their food and water across the desert on their backs, the odds of being bitten eventually by a zombie, or something worse, multiplied. There was also the human element to consider. With the world becoming harder, the quality of people was on a sharp decline. Only the most ruthless and cruel were able to survive, and bands of them, however increasingly rare, were a severe hazard.

With the Hummer's gas tank as full as it was ever likely to be and the excess stored in the back, they drove down the road with Carlos behind the wheel. He kept his speed at 65 miles per hour, having heard once that was the speed vehicles got the best miles per gallon. About half an hour into their trip, as they drove past two walking emaciated corpses, there was a loud _pop_ followed by the _thwap, thwap, thwap,_ of a flat rubber tire.

"You're joking," Carlos said, looking up at the sky. "For real?"

"Do we have a spare?" Heinkel asked.

"I think that was the spare," Yumiko said.

Carlos stopped the Hummer, not wanting to bend or break the axle and further compound their doom. He pulled off to the side out of habit and got out along with the others. Claire saw that it wasn't the spare that had been blown, but another tire. All the tires were old and worn and Claire wasn't really surprised that this had happened.

"Maybe you two could, I don't know, pray or something?" Carlos said, looking to Heinkel and Yumiko.

"I'm going to go take care of the two zombies we passed," Heinkel said, pulling a fire axe out of the Hummer's back seat. "We'll spend the night here and hope too many don't show up. Maybe God will send something…who knows."

A rock had punctured the tire, and not a particularly sharp one, testifying as to how poor a condition the tires were all in. Carlos stood and stared at the flat front left tire while Claire tried to fan herself while standing next to Yumiko by the Hummer. "Glad you came to America with me?" Claire asked.

"I'm not sure there was a better option," Yumiko said, looking down the road as Heinkel neared the two zombies. "Helping you find your brother was the right thing to do, and I'm glad we tried."

Claire smiled and turned her gaze to the hot asphalt. Tried had been the key word. Once again, she had not been able to find her brother Chris. It seemed every time she went looking for him, she wound up in Umbrella's mess. She had hoped at least this time, with the world ending, she would be reunited with him. "But no, here I am in the desert," she muttered.

"What's that?" Yumiko said.

"Nothing."

"No, I mean, what's that?" She was pointing down the road in the direction Heinkel had gone. Claire squinted, worrying Yumiko had spotted a mutant and Heinkel was about to be attacked

It wasn't a mutant, but a motorcycle. Heinkel had felled the two zombies and was standing in the middle of the road, the axe in hand as the motorcycle slowed to a stop. The rider was wearing a hood or a cowl and Claire couldn't tell much more than that. Heinkel and the rider spoke for a few moments before Heinkel jumped into the cluttered sidecar and rode down to the broken Hummer.

The rider was a woman wearing a long brown coat over a white top. She had brown shorts and kept her legs protected from the road by long stockings that fastened to her shorts. She took the hood she was wearing down as she dismounted from her motorcycle, revealing short, dirty blond hair that was as in need of a wash as any of theirs. "Hi," she said. "My name is Alice. I've met Heinkel, here."

"We saw," Claire said, shaking hands with Alice. "I'm Claire. This is Carlos and that's Yumiko." Claire was sure Yumiko's second personality would come up sooner or later, but it could wait. "We're pretty much dead, but it was nice meeting you."

The joke fell a little flat, but Alice forced a smile. "Flat tire or no gas?"

"A little of both," Carlos said, who was looking at Alice more so than was polite. "That tanker you passed was ours. We ditched it not half an hour ago. Siphoned its tank and now a flat tire."

Alice went to her sidecar and began digging through her supplies. She pulled out a fine-toothed saw for cutting metal and handed it to Carlos. "See if you can't widen your wheel wells. If we're lucky, we can fit the truck tires onto this thing. Are they all bad?"

Claire nodded. "Bald and worthless."

"What about the truck?"

"Slightly less bald and worthless," Carlos said. "I'll saw."

"I'll go with you," Claire said. "There's a jack and a tire iron in the tanker."

Claire made room for herself in Alice's side car as she turned and drove back towards the tanker. With the wind and the sound of the engine, there was little opportunity to talk but plenty to wonder and suspect. Was this Alice woman a scout? She had been carrying a lot of supplies for that to make sense, but Claire had seen stranger things. In any case, unless the woman was a scout or an outcast from a larger group of people, she had to be capable to survive on her own for as long as she looked to have had.

They stopped by the tanker and found that about five zombies has already stumbled across it at were moaning around the cab. Alice drew two curved blades from under her coat and made short work of the zombies, cleaving their skulls and severing their heads.

"Nice," Claire said. "Yumiko and you might have things to talk about."

"That mousy nun?" Alice said. "I mean…"

Claire laughed and explained Yumiko's mental condition. Alice's reaction was as Claire had expected. "Vatican agents," she said. "Out here?"

"It's a long story," Claire said. She told it as they got the jack out and began removing tires from the tanker. Claire had Alice help gather rocks to keep the axles from bending when they let the jack down, in case of the remote chance they hit upon a load of gasoline and would be able to refuel the tanker.

Claire explained her own dealings with Umbrella from Raccoon City, to Rockfort Island, to her brief time helping the Iscariot organization carry out covert operations against Umbrella. She told her about Carlos's involvement with Umbrella, quickly getting to the part where he was betrayed and began work taking the company down.

After Claire had run out of explanations to make, Alice stopped and looked at her. Her eyes seemed to pierce her and the expression on her face was one of flat astonishment or disbelief.

_Great…_Clair thought. _I've made her think I'm crazy. Too much information, should've shut my mouth…_

"I've heard of you," Alice said. "You're Claire Redfield. Your brother's name is Chris."

"How…how do you know that?" Claire asked, wondering just who this Alice person was.

Alice blinked as though coming out of a mild trance. "I've had dealings with Umbrella, too," she said. "They did something to me. Made me a test subject."

Claire unconsciously took a few steps backward, looking for spines or extra arms to come popping out of Alice. "Why didn't you say anything before?" Claire asked.

"I wasn't sure who you were," Alice said. "Everyone I meet out here is either ignorant of Umbrella's hand in this or a neo-barbarian cannibal."

"We're neither," Claire said. "We're just a bunch of wandering losers."

"Losers?"

Claire held her hands out and looked around the desert on both sides of the highway. "Look at this," she said, letting her hands flop to their sides. "We were all fighting to stop Umbrella. Me, the Vatican, ex-STARS…even some agency in England was after them, but look at what happened anyway."

Alice shrugged. "I blame the people. Everyone knew well enough what Umbrella was up to in time to stop them, but they didn't. Greed, laziness…whatever it was, we're all equally to blame. It's over now, so I don't care. Let's get these tires back and see if they fit before it gets dark. I've got a little something I'd like to run by you all."

Claire nodded, feeling slightly ashamed at her speech. It was true, they had lost, but being sorry wasn't going to make it better.

**To be continued…**


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Twelve.**

After the jet touched down in Northern Nevada, Wesker and Krauser had to leave it immediately for a helicopter as the tarmac was in the process of being overrun. The only think keeping the pilot of the chopper from leaving seemed to be the promise of a swift shot from Krauser's bow that would place an incendiary-tipped arrow into the fuel tank.

Wesker drew a pistol and began shooting the zombies in between him and the chopper. Krauser meanwhile kept his arrow ready to fly should the pilot turn chicken. They boarded and the chopper took off, headed south towards Las Vegas.

"This looks bad," Krauser said, looking out the chopper window at the ground bellow. The airport was protected well enough to keep the people inside from being eaten, but like everyone else, their supplies were low.

"It's always darkest before the dawn, and all that nonsense," Wesker said. "Victoria and the others have reached the western states intact. If all goes well, they'll be in Nevada in another week. The psyionic blips we've been reading will lead them to her trail, and then they'll move in. Once we have her at the Nevada facility, we'll unlock her secrets and begin rebuilding."

"And we flew out here because…?" Krauser said.

"Insurance. If they fail to gain Alice's cooperation voluntarily, you and I will force the issue personally."

"So instead of just Alice, we'll have the vampire to contend with, not to mention Leon and Jill Valentine. Plus there's that Integra woman."

"Don't forget Ashley Graham," Wesker said.

Krauser laughed and sneered. "Make all the jokes you want, Wesker, I…"

"No joke," Wesker said. "Why do you think I arranged it so four humans would be accompanying the vampire?"

"In case she'd need something to eat?" Krauser said.

"Partly, but considering their previous relationships, I doubt Victoria will make a meal of any of them. I had them go along to be a liability for Victoria in case she went rogue on us in some fashion. That plus the bomb we planted in the vehicle, The Bus they're calling it, virtually assures our victory should any mutiny occur."

Krauser didn't seem convinced. He sat with his arms crossed as the helicopter flew through the air over the swarm of undead and out across the desert.

***

Seras woke to a knock on the lid of her coffin. She opened it and sat up, rubbing her eyes. "Are we there yet?" she asked.

Integra stood by the coffin with her assault rifle slung over her shoulder. "Yes," Integra said. "We've been watching the parking lot for a while. There's a few zombies wandering around but not much else that we've seen."

Seras got up and attached her machete sheath to her belt and picked up her own rifle, checking it to make sure it was loaded. "You don't have to go, you know," Seras said. "I'm not going to get infected by the virus or torn to pieces."

"We're done discussing this," Integra said, moving to the side hatch on The Bus.

"Be careful," Jill said as The Bus slowed to a halt. "And don't forget the sacks."

Seras grabbed two large burlap sacks as Integra opened the hatch. With the rifle held up to her shoulder, Integra scanned both sides of The Bus before stepping out into the cracked pavement of the Wal-Mart's parking lot.

Leon had gotten them quite close to the door and there were only two zombies between them and the front door. Integra shot them both while Seras turned around and began firing into the parking lot. Each crack of her gun was accompanied by a soft flop as an approaching zombie went down.

Once she had killed the bulk of the zombies in the parking lot Seras turned and backed up Integra. "Let me walk point," Seras said.

"No," Integra said, stepping over the broken glass that marked the former automatic door. Inside the Wal-Mart it was dark, although Seras could see fine. Integra moved slowly, letting her eyes adjust.

"At least it's small," Seras said, looking at the ruined store. To her left were the cash registers while to her right was a faded Dunkin' Donuts sign hanging lopsided.

It looked like a hurricane had come through the place and blown everything down without damaging the building itself. Towards the back of the store the shelves had all been toppled like dominoes while the center was filled with downed clothing racks and displays.

"I see two down at the end of the cash registers," Seras said.

"I've got them," Integra said.

Integra fired three times, one of her shots striking a zombie in the throat instead of the head. With both dead, Seras listened to see if the gunshots would attract the attention of any zombies remaining in the store. With all the garbage strewn about, anything moving was bound to be hear by her.

Hearing nothing, Seras followed Integra as she moved in a methodical pattern around the store. It was slow going for Integra, who couldn't see as well, but Seras didn't think they would find much of anything regardless of how fast they went. She heard the crunch of glass near the front door and turned to down a zombie that had made it past The Bus. Next time, Seras thought, it might do to have Jill sit on top and shoot stragglers that came up on their backside.

"I think this place has been picked clean," Seras said as they stood in what remained of the electronics section. "Even the clothing section is bare."

"Too bad. A change of clean clothes would be good," Integra said. "Let's check the donut store and get out of here before we attract a swarm and have to waste more bullets."

"If it were just me here, I could rely on my machete and we wouldn't need to waste bullets," Seras said.

Integra stopped beneath the Dunkin' Donuts sign a one end of the store and pointed her rifle over the counter. Sure there were no lurking torsos or other horrors, she turned to Seras. "I haven't been three meters from that infernal machine in weeks, Seras. I'm willing to spend some ammunition and risk a little life and limb to get away from it for a short while. I don't know how those three can stand it."

Integra climbed up onto the counter, keeping the rifle at the ready. She dropped down on the floor in back and began kicking things around. Seras became nervous when she disappeared around the back. Seras hadn't heard any zombies walking but that didn't mean there wasn't one playing opossum.

There was a crashing sound followed by gunfire. Seras leapt over the counter and went running around to the back where Integra had fallen back against the wall. On the floor was the leathery body of a zombie, shoeless and dressed in rags. "Are you alright?" Seras asked, helping Integra to her feet.

"Yes," Integra said. "It was just standing there, not moving. When I came around the corner, it lunged. I've never seen an intact zombie stand and play opossum. I guess the brain damage make their behavior erratic. You can let go of me now."

Seras had been squeezing the sleeve on Integra's coat. She let go abruptly. "Damnit," Seras said.

"I'm fine, Seras," Integra said. "I fell because I tripped over a cardboard box. It never got close."

"I don't think you should be accompanying me on these little expeditions," Seras said. "It's only a matter of time before you're bitten."

"I'll take that into consideration," Integra said.

Seras thought she had plenty of time already to consider it and unless she was harboring some hidden death-wish , should've opted to stay on The Bus. There was no convincing Integra of this, she knew, and briefly thought that if Integra were to suddenly suffer a broken leg, she might no longer have a choice.

Seras nixed the idea and instead fixed Integra with a hard look. "One more close call and I'm going to insist," she said.

"We'll see how close it is," Integra said. "There's nothing back here. Let's go."

They went back to The Bus and Seras used her machete on three zombies that had congregated around it. Jill opened the side hatch for them after Seras knocked and they both filed in, saying nothing.

"No luck?" Jill said.

"Trashed and picked clean," Seras said.

Ashley and Leon had moved to the back and were sitting around the small table they used for meals. Integra joined them along with Jill, while Seras performed a weapons check on their rifles.

"We have to pick out spots better," Leon said. "We're just asking for trouble going into places like this at random."

Seras listened to them discuss scavenging strategies while checked and rechecked the weapons. One train of thought was going through her mind despite her efforts to stop it. Had the zombie in the donut shop bitten Integra, what then? Would she be the one to shoot Integra, or would Integra shoot herself?

Taking a deep breath to steady her voice, she leaned both rifles against the wall. "I'm going to go check the cars in the parking lot," she said quickly. The four stopped talking and looked at her as she climbed up to the ceiling hatch. It would save one of them closing the side one behind her.

There were only two cars in the lot, both with broken windows and missing tires.

**To be continued…**


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter Thirteen.**

They drove down the highway in the Hummer with the motorcycle trailing close behind. The Hummer's headlights illuminated the corpses standing in the road, giving Claire barely enough time to avoid them.

"Gas guzzling piece of crap," Claire said, looking at the gauge. They passed a sign that told them there was food and lodging a mile up ahead.

"We should stop," Carlos said. "We might get lucky and find some gas."

"More like a place to die," Claire said, sounding more morbid than she had intended.

Claire rolled down the window when the exit came into view and gestured that she was turning right. The right blinker had burnt out long ago. Alice put a hand up, signaling she got the message and followed the Hummer as it turned off the highway.

The lights of the Hummer showed them a ruined town. To the right of the exit was a fancy but small hotel across the street from which was a gas station. The faded Mobile sign hung precariously over a upended portable toilet while the nearby pumps did not look promising.

Heinkel and Yumiko both held flashlights pointed out the open windows, scanning the streets and buildings for movement. "Looks clear," Heinkel said. "There might be gas."

The four in the Hummer had made an observation during their time as scavengers across the dead land of America. The walking corpses followed people. Where people had been had been picked clean. No sign of zombies sometimes meant supplies, but not always.

Claire shut off the Hummer's lights and slowly pulled up to the gas station, parking in the center so they would be able to reach all four hoses without moving the vehicle. Heinkel and Carlos wasted no time in going into the station to ransack it. Carlos's rifle was fixed with a flashlight, while Heinkel held a pistol in one hand and a light in the other.

"I've got a pry bar," Alice said, walking up next to Claire as she scanned the ground with a flashlight, looking for the lid to the underground gasoline tanks. Yumiko was attempting to get the pumps to work.

Alice pried the lid out of the concrete with ease and the sweet smell of gasoline came wafting up from the hole. Claire felt like shouting with delight, but knew better. Not seeing zombies didn't mean they weren't there. "Thank God," Claire said. "Yumiko, get the siphon hose."

"Is there gas?" Yumiko asked, going to the Hummer and opening the back hatch. "Praise the Lord."

A small hand pump was used to siphon the gas up from the underground tank. Claire pumped it directly into the Hummer's tank while Yumiko pulled out the long empty red plastic containers they used for storage.

There was a lone pistol shot from inside the station. The three women outside all turned their heads and listened for more but none came. They were silent until gas came spilling from the Hummer's tank, prompting Claire to direct the hose into one of the plastic containers.

Heinkel and Carlos came out of the gas station. Carlos was carrying a cardboard box while Heinkel held his rifle. "We got canned eats," Carlos said. "Good stuff too."

Claire smiled and switched containers. There seemed to be a lot of gasoline in the tank and she wondered briefly if she wasn't dreaming. Too often her preoccupation with scavenging had lead her to dream of finding bastions of plenty along the desolate highways only to wake up to meager rations and the knowledge that soon they would hit a dry spell they couldn't rough it through.

"Do you hear that?" Alice said.

"Hear what?" Claire said, looking up and turning her head about while her eyes darted to the streets and ruined shops along the road.

Alice walked behind the Hummer and faced down the street the hotel was on. Holding up a flashlight, she flicked it on. Claire picked up the plastic container and moved it towards the Hummer's hood where she could see. Yumiko was standing there, her mouth slightly agape. "What…" she said, trying to puzzle out what she was seeing.

Caught in Alice's light like an actor on a stage was a human figure, crouched in the middle of the road like an ape. It was completely naked and lipless with shining eyes and blood red skin. It didn't like being in the light and it loped across the street behind an antique store sign.

"That's not good," Carlos said, rushing the box of food into the Hummer and taking his rifle back from Heinkel.

Claire had suspected it was all too good to be true. Wondering if she should turn on the Hummer's lights to ward off the creature or keep them off to avoid attracting more, she switched to the last plastic container. With so much gas, she wanted to find more containers and load up on as much as possible, but the bizarre zombie had cast doubt and fear on her plans.

"What the hell was that thing?" Heinkel asked, her German accent coming in thick. "It didn't move like a zombie."

"Maybe it's a mutant," Yumiko said.

"I think a bit of both," Alice said, drawing one of her curved blades. "Someone should probably shoot it. It's getting braver."

It edged out from behind the sign and crept forward on all fours. Claire was reminded of the skinless monsters in Raccoon City, the ones with the long lashing tongues that could split a man's stomach open with a quick flicker. "Got it," Carlos said, firing a single shot into the monster's brain. It fell onto its stomach and spasmed, dead.

Of the T-virus horrors she had seen over the years, all had proved killable for the most part. The only one that still haunted her nightmares was the thing called Tyrant. It seemed to take nothing short of a rocket launcher to blow it to pieces. Small arms had no effect on it, save maybe to anger what little was left of its mind. It had left her with the deep paranoia that she might run up against something that didn't care if its brains were blown out.

Alice, Heinkel, and Carlos all went over to the monster's body to examine it. To conserve batteries, Alice alone kept her light shining on it. "Looks like a zombie on crack," Carlos said. "Look at the claws."

"It's still got its skin," Heinkel said. "It's just flushed with blood."

"Dead blood shouldn't be that red," Alice said.

"I wonder if it's warm," Carlos said.

"Are you going to touch it and find out?" Heinkel asked.

Claire was about to tell them to quit poking the body and find more gas containers when the sound of a garbage can clattering came from down the street that made a T with the one they were on. Alice's light was on the street and soon another spry red zombie came walking upright down the road. This one was wearing tattered clothes, perhaps an old military uniform and it too was lipless with eyes shining.

It opened its mouth wide, letting its swollen purple tongue wave about as if it was already eating them in its twisted imagination. Claire found the gesture to be one of the more unnerving things she had experienced in recent memory and so apparently did Carlos, as she blew the top of the thing's head off without saying a word.

"I have a feeling this is going to get worse," Carlos said. "Let's bug out."

Claire pulled up the siphon hose, cursing. They all piled into the Hummer while Alice climbed onto her bike. With Claire in the driver's seat and the Hummer stinking of gas fumes, they drove back onto the highway with the windows down. "This isn't safe at all," Claire said, tilting her head out the window slightly. "On a lot of levels."

"We'll strap the containers to the roof once we're clear of this place," Carlos said.

"Good idea," Heinkel said. "I'm getting dizzy."

"Me too," Yumiko added.

Claire hit the wheel in frustration. "We have to go back in the morning. There was a lot of gas in that station."

"We'll see what it looks like in the morning," Carlos said as they drove into the night, the light on Alice's bike shining behind them. "You know the day can be worse for zombies."

Claire huffed, both in aggravation and in an effort to drive the fumes from her nasal passages. She pulled over. "This thing is going to explode if we don't strap those to the roof."

Alice pulled over with them and gassed her bike up with one of the containers. "Do you want to go back in the morning?" Alice asked.

"Yes," Claire said. "We'll need more containers."

They would also need some more luck, Claire though, although she guessed she might be tempting fate a little. Getting away with what they had was nothing short of a miracle as they had been on death's door not long ago. The red horrors seemed like hideous reminders that there was only so much luck to be had before one was pushing it too far.

Still, they would go back tomorrow and see what there was to see.

**To be continued…**


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter Fourteen.**

Wesker and Krauser walked out of a wooden shack that stood adjacent to a sand-covered concrete helipad. They were headed towards a chain link fence that surrounded the little wooden facility.

At the edge of the fence was a scaffold outfitted with hydraulic boom lift tipped with a wire snare. Standing atop the scaffold were two men. One was in a white lab coat operating the controls on the boom. The other was dressed in a black paramilitary uniform topped with a black helmet and a facemask. Wesker wondered why the man hadn't boiled to death in the heat.

"Dr. Isaacs," Wesker said. "What are you doing?"

The man in the white lab coat turned around, leaving the boom with the snare to hang idly over the fifty or so wailing corpses that stood outside the gate waving their hands in the air. "Collecting specimens, sir," Isaacs said. "There is still some research to be done using the Alice clones. I feel that the more we know before she is captured, the more we will be able to use her."

Wesker looked down at the rectangular container Isaacs intended to drop a zombie into once he fished it up from the outside using the boom snare. There was a set of large wheels on the bottom and a handle on the side. Wesker frowned

Wesker looked to Krauser, thinking he might be the one to find some fault in what Isaacs was doing. Wesker thought it a waste of time, but at the moment could find no logical flaw. "Exactly how many clones are there left?" Wesker said.

"Twenty," Isaacs said. "We tested one yesterday. She got a little farther, but the results still are not promising."

Isaacs turned from Wesker and resumed running the boom, trying to fit it over a zombie he had selected and snare it.

Wesker and Krauser walked along the fence away from Isaacs, drawing off some of the zombies that had collected near the scaffold. The fence would hold better if the force on it were spread out instead of focused on one spot. "I think I might have some target practice later," Krauser said, looking into the rotten dried faces as they gnashed their teeth in frustration. "It'd be a pain if this fence went down."

Wesker agreed. While the facility beneath their feet was as secure as it was expansive, its supplies were low. It was also the one place on the continent that the Alice Vaccine could be developed and produced.

They stopped at a shallow trench that smelled of fresh rot. It was filled with more than a dozen or so corpses in various states of decay. The ones nearest the fence were the worst, with the freshest being directly in front of Wesker. All the bodies were that of the same petite woman wearing a red dress and black boots. Each corpse bore a different kill wound, the latest a bullet hole in its stomach.

Wesker looked into the open glass eyes of the freshest body and took off his sunglasses. As he watched a fly walk over the green iris he thought he could smell gasoline. He put his glasses back on and stood.

"Anything?" Krauser asked.

"Enough to know this isn't good enough." Wesker was only able to explain what he was doing with extremely nebulous scientific postulations. Psyionic ability was one thing, but how it applied to dead clones was another. "Get a security detachment and meet me in the recovery room. Prepare for the worst."

***

In a white room with one glass wall sat a table surrounded by men in black all holding rifles. On the table was a thin naked woman with short straw colored hair, made darker by the fluid her body was covered in. She was unconscious and Wesker, who stood near her head looking down into her face was waiting for her to wake up.

Outside of the room stood Dr. Isaacs, his face flushed red with anger. Behind him, only a foot or so away, was Krauser. "This is a waste. An utter waste," Isaacs said.

"No one asked your opinion," Krauser said, bumping Isaacs.

Wesker's sunglasses rested in his pocket and his hands were bare as they sat gently on the table next to the sleeping woman's head. Her eyes began to flutter and they opened, along with her mouth in a quiet gasp. She tried to sit up and cover her bare chest, but Wesker's hands on her temples held her gently down as he soothed her. "There, there," he said tenderly. "It's okay, you're safe."

Everyone in the room fidgeted slightly. Hearing such words from Wesker was akin to hearing a wall speak. Even Krauser's brown furrowed.

Touching the woman's temples and stroking them, Wesker looked into her bright greenish eyes. He didn't know what he was looking for or how to even look for it, but he knew that if he dig around he might find something, somehow. Suddenly, his breath stopped. He felt like he had stuck his hand into a live fuse box and was now being connected to every house on the street.

There were the sleepers down bellow. Shut off. The barest flicker in a dead brain above. Out beyond that was something like a pulsing sun of electricity. He reached for it, heedless of the burn it might cause. Northwest. A building. The word hotel.

He felt like he had been kicked and snapped his head up as if waking from a doze. He blinked. His eyes were stiff and everyone was looking at him and the naked woman on the table, who was trying to cover herself and sit up.

As his senses came back, he grabbed the woman by the chin and the back of the head. With a sharp twist, he snapped her neck and let her head fall dead onto the table. "Dispose of this," he said, putting his sunglasses back on and walking out of the room.

"We could've used…" Isaacs said before being shoved into the glass wall hard by Krauser. Wesker came around the corner as he was putting his gloves back on.

"I have some maps to look over and then a phone call to make," Wesker said. "Be ready to move out within a five minute window."

"Yes sir," Krauser said, looking down at Isaacs who was getting to his feet. Wesker ignored him and left through a door. "Research purposes," Krauser, looking at Isaacs who was walking slowly away. "Right."

**To be continued…**


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter Fifteen.**

The Bus was parked in a ruined gas station over the spot where fuel trucks used to stop to refill the underground tanks. There wasn't much gas left in them, but the special siphon hose The Bus had been equipped with had been designed with scrapping the bottom of the barrel in mind.

Seras had publicly announced that she should go looking in the surrounding township for supplies along with Jill and Integra. Leon and Ashley was all that was needed to man The Bus's current operation.

The talk had been a long time in coming. Far too long. Seras was at a loss to explain how it had slipped her mind for so long. Maybe she had been under more stress than she suspected.

Crossing the street and rounding a corner they stood in the back lot of a small McDonald's. The dumpster had been tipped over and the lot was strewn with old blown about garbage. Jill and Integra carried the assault rifles while Seras kept her machete drawn. Seras thought she sensed a vague air of menace in the town, but none of them had seen any zombies. The sun was low in the sky, making Seras squint.

"So what have you found out?" Jill asked in a low voice. No one knew just how good the bugging equipment on The Bus was, but if it was on par with some of its other features, caution was necessary.

"It's definitely wired for sound," Seras said. "I can't be sure, but I think there's some video as well. There are some pinholes in the corners that look suspicious but I can't look at them too closely."

"Surveillance is one thing," Integra said. "What about the other?"

Seras licked her dry lips. She almost didn't want to state her other suspicion, but the more she thought about it, the more it seemed true. "It's definitely rigged to blow. There's wires under there that don't look right and I think I can smell it." Smell wasn't the right word, but it was the best she could do.

"So what should we do?" Jill said. "They've got us by the neck. We can't abandon that thing. Not out here."

None of them said anything. Even Integra seemed at a loss. "It's clear that the bugs and the bomb are an insurance," Integra said finally. "They didn't want us driving off with their toy and leaving them with nothing to show for it. I don't like to admit it, but that was rather prudent of them."

"We don't live up to our end, they blow us up. Fair enough," Jill said. "But why not tell us about it? Why make it a surprise? Granted, it's something they would do just because they're Umbrella but…"

"We're not thinking ahead far enough," Seras said, tapping her shoulder with the machete and looking off to where the near translucent moon sat stamped in the sky. "When we give them Alice, then what? What good will we be? No one seems to have forgotten that we're enemies."

It was true, none of them had thought beyond handing Alice over to Umbrella. Even that event was nebulous. She might come quietly after some convincing or they might have to take her by force. "We give them Alice, they tell us to take The Bus as thanks, The Bus blows up with us in it, vampire and all," Jill said. "Sounds like an Umbrella plan if I ever heard one."

"This shouldn't change anything," Integra said. "We need to consider what our actions will be once Umbrella has what it needs. I'll confess, I haven't thought beyond that point."

"I don't think anyone has," Jill said.

Seras wondered if that wasn't because no one felt there _was_ anything beyond that point. Wesker showing up at the lighthouse had seemed like an extension program, this entire journey a kind of afterthought. "Borrowed time," Seras said. Jill and Integra looked at her. "Let's face it, it does seem like we're all living on borrowed time. I don't mean to be gloomy, but we're looking to Umbrella to save the world."

She stopped as what she had left to say was in fact rather gloomy. "You're right," Jill said. "It does feel a little like we're just trying to save face."

"Have either of you ever played Hearts?" Integra asked.

"Is it like Bridge?" Jill asked.

"No," Integra said. "The object of Hearts is to score as few points as possible. Each card in the Heart suit is worth a point and the Queen of Spades is worth thirteen points. If you end up with the Queen, you're in bad shape, unless."

"Unless what?" Seras asked.

"Unless you Shoot for the Moon," Integra said. "Get every Heart and the Queen of Spades and you win the game. Or you score no points that round, I forget exactly how it goes, but you get the point."

Jill and Seras looked at one another, then back at Integra. Integra sighed and pushed her glasses up. "The T-virus had overrun the planet, we're stuck out in the desert surrounded by mutants and freaks, we're completely under Umbrella's thumb and even if we do get Alice we're still apt to be killed. We've got the Queen of Spades and just about every Heart in the deck. It's time to Shoot for the Moon."

Seras's brow wrinkled and Jill clicked her tongue. "So we should shoot ourselves?" Jill said. "Eat zombie flesh…I don't follow."

"We are essentially Umbrella employees now, correct?" Integra said. Both women shrugged and reluctantly half-nodded. "Umbrella has made a good show of keeping up the corporate image, but aside from Wesker, Umbrella is still made up of human beings who are likely as disappointed with the apocalypse as we are. How do you think Wesker has been able to keep it together like he has?"

Jill let out a breath and shifted her weight. Seras too was beginning to feel impatient. Talking about the bomb had been her only goal along with scavenging the nearby houses for food and supplies. "They've got nothing else," Seras said. "the company is the only structure they have left, why not follow it? It'll keep them alive longer."

"The point I am trying to make," Integra said, "is that Umbrella is now closer to a post-apocalyptic tribe of humans ruled by a brute than an old-world corporation. They follow Wesker not only because he's a mutant freak and can murder them, but because he gives them direction and can lead. What I'm proposing is a hostile takeover of Umbrella Incorporated."

Seras looked directly up into the sky, her mouth a little open and brought her head back down. Seras wanted to ask Integra if she had gone insane, or rather accuse her of it, but she didn't, wondering if it really was all that insane. She looked at Jill. Her expression had turned cold, but her eyes seemed to show she was pondering something. "So you'd like to run Umbrella," Jill said.

"Yes," Integra said. "You can think I'm power hungry all you like, but consider this: Umbrella is the most powerful group in the world. The dim and distant hope for humanity is all up to Umbrella. We can entrust that with Albert Wesker, and our ghosts can take comfort knowing he'll be the one setting the tone for the New Humanity, or we can take charge."

"Shoot for the Moon…" Jill said. "Can we change the name?"

"Let's call it Hellsing," Seras said.

"How about STARS?" Jill said, smiling.

"We can call it the YMCA for all I care," Integra said. "So long as Wesker's head is on a pike and someone with a soul is leading that company for a change, I'll be happy."

"We need to let Ashley and Leon in on this," Seras said. "When we get back, we can talk about doing scavenging in shifts. Throw in a little argument to make it sound real, and tell them each separately."

"What about the bomb and the surveillance equipment?" Jill asked. "We won't be able to do much with that over us."

"I had an idea concerning that," Integra said. "That annoying plug under The Bus? The entire machine goes dead once its disconnected. There isn't even any backup power supply. They can't blow the machine while the power is cut."

Both Seras and Jill looked skeptical, but Seras began to nod. "That's true. The cable is a complete design flaw they didn't have time to fix. We could park The Bus and go under with the pretense of securing it, unplug it, and remove the bombs and cameras."

"We should talk that over with everyone first," Jill said. "It could go wrong."

The three nodded, all looking at the wall of the McDonald's in the direction of The Bus, half expecting to hear it explode because they underestimated the sound bugging. "Let's go back," Jill said.

"You two go," Seras said. "I'm actually going to look around. Nighttime in closed spaces isn't a good idea for either of you."

"Fine, but be careful yourself. You're not the indestructible vampire your master was," Integra said.

Seras nodded, wishing she hadn't mentioned Alucard. Hinting at him was sometimes enough to make Seras think about him, something she didn't care to do before walking into danger. Integra was right, she was not indestructible and needed to pay attention.

**To be continued…**


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter Sixteen.**

The years had not been kind to the hotel. Claire hadn't bothered trying to read the faded sign out in front, not wanting to remain outside in the daylight for too long. After being chased out of the town by the bizarre red zombies they had spent the night cramped in the Hummer down the highway a few miles. Wanting more gas, they had come back.

The wallpaper in the hallway was cracked and faded with mold forming in the corners where the ceiling met the wall. Claire walked with her gun pointed forward, ready to fire. Behind her was Heinkel, both of her pistols drawn and ready as well.

"What are we hoping to find in here?" Heinkel said. "This is a hotel. No one was staying here."

"Maybe," Claire said, stopping in front of room 201. All the doors in the hotel were locked the old fashioned way. Claire had taken a master key from the office on the ground floor. "All we need is to find one person's stash that they left and we're set for a week or more. Don't forget the complimentary coffee and mints."

Heinkel stuck her tongue out, disgusted. "Old coffee and mints. Delicious."

"Got my back," Claire said, keying the lock and pushing the door open with her foot. The room looked clean but smelled musty. The bathroom was directly on the left opposite the small closet which Claire kept a careful eye on as she walked in.

The beds were both made, the pastoral wallpaper intact, and the blinds were shut, making the room dark. Claire opened the curtain letting the sun it through the man-sized window. She could see across the street to the gas station where Yumiko, Carlos, and Alice were siphoning gasoline into containers they had found and would lash to the Hummer's roof.

"What do you make of that woman?" Claire said.

Heinkel was filling a sack with the coffee and tea packets resting on a stand next to a coffee machine. "Years ago I would say we shoot her," Heinkel said. "Now, who cares? Umbrella screwed her just like everybody else. Maybe they did her a favor, giving her powers or whatever."

Alice was strong and had the reflexes of a cat. She didn't show it off, which Claire supposed was why she was so accepting of it. She had known other not-quite-humans who seemed to take every opportunity to display their inhumanity. Alice's abilities had certainly helped her survive by herself and Claire was only glad that Alice seemed willing to help them in exchange for a little company.

"The only thing I'm worried about," Heinkel said, "was her little 'episode' the other night."

Claire nodded, nearly having forgotten. Alice had woken up in the middle of the night with a shriek thereby waking everyone else in the cramped space up as well. She was holding the sides of her head and sweating, muttering something under her breath. Yumiko had managed to calm her down and Alice had said it was a bad dream.

"You don't have nightmares?" Claire asked.

"Who, me?" Heinkel said, bringing her pistol up to her chest and smiling. "Claire…you know me."

She did. Heinkel had been raised in an orphanage run by the Vatican. From the day her tiny hands were able to wrap around a pistol grip, and perhaps a little before that even, she had trained to be an assassin. Sometimes Claire thought she had walked into a Dan Brown novel, but considering her new lifestyle, she wasn't going to complain about where her friends learned their skills. "Well, some of us have nightmares," Claire said. "Even now. We don't know what she's seen or what she's been through."

"Which is the problem," Heinkel said. "Maybe she flipped out and killed her former companions. Umbrella experimented on her. God only knows what the side-effects were." Heinkel made her way back towards the door. "Come on, let's get this over with. I really don't care if she's dangerous. It'll all be the same at the end."

"Ray of sunshine," Claire said, taking one last look at Alice and Carlos as they switched containers. Yumiko was diligently putting the containers onto the Hummer's roof, rigging it so they could drive off at a moment's notice.

Out of the corner of her eye, Claire saw something move at the end of the street behind the gas station. Squinting, she thought it might be a tumbleweed but soon thought different. Lopping down the sidewalk like an ape was another red zombie. It was throwing its head up in the air as it ran, howling. Claire could hear the sound faint through the glass.

Carlos and the others could certainly hear it. Carlos hauled the pump up and Yumiko secured the top containers. Alice bolted for the hotel entrance, coming up to warn her and Heinkel. "We've got trouble," Claire said.

"Zombie?" Heinkel came to the window and looked out. "Ah. Little bastard. We should…" Her thought was cut short by the sight of two more coming down the street behind the other. From out of a nearby alley came three, two of which were going on all fours while the other moved like a sprinter. Most were naked but some wore tattered clothes.

The Hummer pulled out of the gas station and came across the road into the hotel parking lot. More red zombies were coming out of hiding, some from inside houses, other from inside parked and smashed cars. "What the…where?" Claire said.

"They must've moved in during the night," Heinkel said. "Who cares? Let's get out of here."

They ran out into the hall and down the stairs where they met Alice in the lobby. "Let's go. We've got reds," Alice said.

"We know," Claire said, looking past Alice to the glass front door. Instead of seeing the Hummer pull up with Carlos and Yumiko she saw three red forms rush the door. Instead of slamming into it and pounding on the glass, the one in front gripped the door handle and pulled it open.

It had been a while since Claire felt herself flood with fear. "Up the stairs, now!" Claire shouted, running back up. Heinkel fired a shot but then swore and ran up behind Alice. Room 201 seemed as good as any, so Claire darted into it, turning when she got to the bed. Alice shut it behind her and crouched, holding one of her curved blades up over her lips to signal for silence.

They heard footsteps in the hall which soon became a clamor of sound. Inarticulate sounds of hunger and rage filled the hall outside coming from many diseased and mutated throats, forced past gnashing, lipless mouths. Doors and walls were bumped indiscriminately, including theirs.

Quietly, Claire went to the window and tried to find the Hummer outside. It was parked in the middle of the road, surrounded by over two dozen of the red zombies. They were tugging on the door handles and slapping the windows. Slowly, the Hummer crawled forward and picked up speed, throwing them off before they managed to break something or knock the gasoline containers off the roof. Claire had been thinking they might fight, considering who her companions were, but the population and viciousness of the red zombies made her think hiding was better.

Heinkel and Alice seemed to agree as neither made a sound, even to ask Claire what was going on outside. Claire's mind was buzzing with the shock of having so many come seemingly out of nowhere, but took deep breaths and calmed herself. There was no plan for such an event, but she tried to think of what Carlos might do in such a situation.

He would come back, that was for certain. As long as his bravado didn't get the better of him and so long as Yumie didn't wake up, the two would wait and come back when things had calmed down.

She motioned for Alice and Heinkel to come closer. With their heads together Claire began to whisper. "Carlos drove off. He'll be back. There's too many out there to try anything right now. He'll be back, hopefully once things are a little quieter. We should wait."

The other two women were nodding. "We should find something to put in the window so he knows we're here," Alice said. "We can break the window and go down if he parks under it."

Claire nodded, exactly what she had been thinking. She only hoped Carlos was thinking the same way they all were and would deduce their plan.

**To be continued…**


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter Seventeen.**

Leon was told of the plan first, then Ashley. Seras had been the one to tell them both and neither liked it at first. By the end of each conversation, both Ashley and Leon were on board, although Ashley still had reservations.

The Bus was stopped on the highway, shut off to let the engine cool. It was nighttime and Seras didn't feel at all like sleeping, although her human companions took the opportunity to all get some rest. Leon had reclined the driver's seat, Ashley the passenger's side. Integra and Jill slept in the back, both on the shelf beds near the bathroom.

Seras was bored and wanted to go out exploring the Nevada countryside but everyone had taken objection to it. "Anything could be out there," Integra said. "It might not kill you, but do you really want to be bloodied up?"

The real question was did she want to exert herself and then be forced to feed off one of them. Seras had been forced to consider which of her friends she would drink blood from should the need arise. Seras thought Leon, being the largest, could stand to lose the most, so in a pinch she would take him.

Once she had settled the matter in her mind she left it. Having to think about it wasn't pleasant and making a final decision had been worse. Now that she sat awake in the dark cabin, listening to them all breath, she began to reconsider.

As capable as they all were of defending themselves, she was a powerful protective force. They would last much longer with her than without her. Hell, Seras thought, she could help quite a large band of people survive for a long time in a world dominated by the t-virus. All she needed was some blood now and again. People used to donate to the Red Cross all the time, why was drinking blood from a human to fuel her powers such a bad thing?

She wondered if all vampires became monsters after making such justifications. Alucard had never spoken in detail of his past to her, but she knew a little of it. He had been a ruler of some sort in Romania or Transylvania or something like that. Vlad Dracula had been his name. People had called him Vlad the Impaler after what he did to his enemies. At some point he had become a vampire and used his awful powers to rule his people and destroy his enemies.

At first Seras didn't think Alucard had liked her much. He had called her a coward and refused to call her by name. It was always Police Girl this and Police Girl that. Even Integra had used it. Once he had said something about there being a place for a "timid evening walker" in the world, but Seras wasn't sure how he'd meant it.

She didn't want to be like Alucard. Maybe a little blood in exchange for protection was more than a fair trade, but she refused to take it lightly. Her scruples about blood drinking had eroded much over the years, but there will still some to be had and she intended to keep them for a while yet.

The computer at Jill's seat switched on and began to beep. Seras wondered if the entire vehicle wasn't able to operate by remote. It probably was. "Telephone," she said loudly and got up to push the receive button.

Everyone in The Bus was up and standing around Seras as she sat when Wesker's face appeared on the screen. He still wore sunglasses and his hair was combed back as always. "I have some information for you," he said. "Head to the coordinates I've sent you. Look for a hotel. I'm afraid that's all we know."

Before any of them could ask questions or file complaints, the monitor shut off. Everyone in The Bus knew full well that Wesker could still hear and see them and all had worked to ignore it so as to act natural about it. Seras got up out of the chair and let Jill pull up the coordinates. "I'd say it's about half a day's drive from here, provided we don't have any problems," Jill said.

Problems over the past weeks had included detours the GPS and satellite photos hadn't anticipated, mechanical issues with The Bus, scavenging expeditions, and what looked to be the corpse of an earthworm the size a small tunnel blocking the highway.

"I say we go in the morning," Leon said. "The engine is hot and my ass hurts."

"We may as well," Integra said. "If the engine blows, we certainly won't be catching up to her."

Slowly, they all shuffled back to their sleeping spots except for Seras who was once again bored. From the sounds of their breathing, she guessed they were all having some trouble getting back to sleep. Wesker hadn't called them in a while, and half a day meant they were close.

*******

The Bus drove down the exit ramp and all eyes were on the monitors. It showed a gas station with a motorcycle parked near the pumps across the street from a touristy-looking hotel. In the middle of the street was a Hummer with flat oversized wheels. A gun barrel was pointing out the passenger's side and firing at the creatures that got too close.

"What are they?" Ashley said. Surrounding the Hummer were red zombies, moving much more nimbly than they should have been. Seras's mind flashed back to their first night out on The Bus when she had gone out to repair it.

"Mutant zombies," Seras said. "A lot of them."

Well over two dozen had surrounded the Hummer and more seemed to be in the parking lot of the hotel. What Seras found most disturbing was what had been keeping those in the Hummer alive. The zombies had given the window with the gun a wide berth. Several corpses lie sprawled in the road having been shot. No zombie Seras ever saw gave a single thought towards self-preservation but these seemed to realize they could be killed and wanted to avoid it.

Leon drove The Bus down the exit ramp and over the grass into the hotel's parking lot. "Think we should use the big gun?"

"No," Integra said. "Not on this trash. Jill, Seras, would you accompany me up to the roof?"

Jill and Integra went up through the roof hatch with assault rifles, while Seras went up last with her machete. Once up, Jill and Integra took positions with Integra in front and Jill behind, casting a glance behind them now and again. Seras jumped down to the ground, her blade drawn.

She looked through the windshield of the Hummer and didn't believe what she saw. It couldn't be him, not out here.

As she went towards the Hummer, Integra fired single round bursts at the zombies, hitting one each time and causing the rest to scatter. One reverted back to its old suicidal ways and charges Seras only to have its head sliced in two at eye level.

"Seras?" a familiar voice called. "No way."

She looked and saw that it was Carlos. He was older and more harried, but it was definitely him. Next to him in the passenger's seat was another face she recognized, but didn't care to see. "Carlos!" she shouted. "Does that thing run?" She could see that some work had been done to the Hummer, particularly in the way of its tires.

"Yeah, but there's people trapped in the hotel. Three of them. No time to explain." Gunfire from The Bus let Seras know the zombies were trying to surround them.

Seras shouted back to Integra. "Pull around to the front and get ready to open the side hatch. Three people!"

She nodded to Carlos and went to the hotels entrance where there were three red zombies crouched in the foyer. They attacked, forcing her to back up quickly and swing, cutting their heads. She dealt a kick to the third's chest and sent it flying back into the foyer, where she moved forward and dispatched it.

The sound of gunfire was now coming from the floor above her and soon the door at the end of the lobby opened and three people came running out. Two were women she had never seen before, but the third was a woman dressed as a priest. The three stopped when they saw her, standing with a gore drenched machete. "I know you," Heinkel said to Seras.

"Introductions later, outside," Seras said.

She turned and went back out. The Bus had pulled up in front of the door and the side hatch had opened. Seras stood off to the side facing the parking lot while the three behind her ran into The Bus. Heinkel fired off to the left at a zombie that had come around.

Seras entered once they were all in, and closed the hatch behind her.

"Follow us to the highway," Leon said into a microphone which blasted his voice over the outside. He threw The Bus into gear and drove it back up the off ramp.

Heinkel saw Integra, and Integra saw Heinkel. "Hellsing," she said. "What the hell is this?"

Integra, and now Seras, were looking at the woman with the short, dirty blond hair. Slowly, Integra's attention went to Heinkel. "I see some of the Vatican survived London," she said.

"You're a long way from London, Hellsing," Heinkel said. "And you've got a nice truck."

"Yes, and thank you," Integra said. "I trust there is no animosity between us?"

The blond woman with sharp blue eyes looked quickly between the two, and seemed on the edge of confusion. The brown haired woman with the ponytail didn't seemed confused, but was looking at Integra and Seras with wary eyes. "I suppose so," Heinkel said. "At least not about London. As to what's happening now…"

"I'm pulling off here," Leon said, making Claire's head perk up.

"Leon?" she said.

The Bus lurched to a hard stop. "Claire!" Leon shouted, getting up out of his seat. "It's you!"

"Maybe you can all have reunion time outside where there's more room," the blond woman said. "I'm Alice, by the way."

Seras noticed everyone on The Bus freeze.

**To be continued…**


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter Eighteen.**

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Alice," Integra said. She was still holding an assault rifle, and Alice carried two curved knives. No one's weapons had been holstered or sheathed, and Seras's mind began to race, thinking about how she would defuse the situation.

Alice smiled politely, but her mouth drew flat and her face became stern and focused. Seras felt the tension in the room mount, and knew one sharp movement would lead to violence.

"I think we should explain ourselves," Seras said. "I'm sure you're wondering about the vehicle we're running around in and where we got it."

"Yes," Alice said. "I was a little curious."

There was a knock from outside. "Hey, you guys die or something?" Carlos shouted.

"It's stuffy in here," Integra said. "Why don't we all go outside?"

Seras opened the hatch and stepped out, fixing Carlos with a look that said all was not well. Carlos seemed confused and backed away. Seras was glad to see the nun, Yumiko, was wearing glasses and her habit, which meant she wasn't about to draw the large sword she carried.

They all filed out of The Bus and stood in its shade. Alice, Heinkel, and Claire stood to one side, while Integra, Jill, and Seras stood at the other. Leon remained in the doorway, while Ashley hadn't left her post in the passenger's seat. Part of their training, Seras remembered, was that one person was on board at all times. Carlos said he would go down the road and keep a lookout.

"We got the vehicle from Umbrella," Integra said.

Alice didn't make a move with her knives, and no one started shooting. Seras felt a little relieved. She didn't know what bonds had formed with Alice and the others, or how long they had been traveling together, but she hoped Claire's connection to Leon, and Carlos's to her, would keep a battle from occurring.

"Did they give it to you?" Alice asked.

"Yes," Integra said. "Seras and I were contacted by Umbrella agents in England and we were told that they would be able to synthesize a cure or a vaccine for the T-virus using your DNA. To that end, we were charged with contacting you and securing your cooperation. It was a lucky coincidence Leon, Ashley, and Jill happened to have been taken in by Umbrella at the same time."

Seras didn't like the expression passing over Alice's face. It was a look of disgusted amusement, bordering on hostility. "Wow, that's…quite a story," she said. "And do you believe they can cure the T-virus using my DNA?"

Integra didn't, Seras knew. They had reached the conclusion that at best, Umbrella wanted to create a vaccine, or at least a version of the virus that would have the same effect on everyone else as it did Alice, making them immune to the zombie contagion and more durable to the rigors of a T-virus infested world.

There was no way, that Seras could see, they would be able to explain their ultimate plan to overthrow Wesker and take control of Umbrella themselves this close to The Bus. Seras didn't dare try to use body signals, as she was sure the entire scene was being monitored by cameras outside The Bus.

"This is what I believe," Integra said. "The world will die if everything is left as it is. Umbrella is telling the truth about their need for you, and I have no illusions about how trustworthy they are."

Alice opened her mouth to speak, but Integra held up a finger. "Consider this," she said. "Umbrella has recruited its sworn enemies to come and treat with you when they could just as easily have gone after you on their own and not bothered asking. With us at your back, we can work to ensure they don't double cross us all."

They had never discussed what line they would use on Alice should they meet her. Nor had they asked Wesker about how powerful she was, should they need to fight. These seemed like gross oversights to Seras, but now she was thinking ahead to the near future.

Alice needed to be away from The Bus, then their real goal could be explained to her. Either that, or the power cable needed to come undone.

"I don't think I trust any of you," Alice said, backing up. "Anyone who would work for Umbrella can't be trusted."

Seras decided it was now or never. She got down on her knees, then onto her stomach. No one said anything, but she could tell she was getting funny looks. Swiftly, she crawled on her belly to the power cord, held up by duct tape to cut down on the amount of times it became unplugged, and reached for it fully expecting The Bus to explode any moment.

She tugged it and it came undone. She crawled back from underneath and looked at Leon. "Power's off,' he said.

"Let's hope this works," Integra said, looking at Seras sternly.

"What did you do?" Alice asked, backing farther. Heinkel looked jumpy and Claire appeared concerned as well.

"She shut the power off," Integra said. "Which means the bombs and surveillance devices theoretically don't work, and can be removed."

Jill went inside The Bus along with Leon. Seras heard them breaking out the tools they would need to remove the inner covers and take out the explosives. They knew The Bus's schematics to a degree and Seras hoped it was enough.

"It also means," Integra said, "we're tipping out hand."

"Meaning?" Heinkel said, annoyed.

"Of course we don't believe or trust Umbrella," Integra said to Alice. "What, do you think we're so stupid? We've been fighting them for a long time and have suffered greatly at their hands. We won't be taken for fools, not by the likes of them." Her voice had raised to a controlled shout that made Seras's heart leap. It was the old Integra speaking. "We've got their vehicle, we know where their Nevada facility is, and we now have you, the one thing they want. I'm certain Wesker will come in person now and that's when we'll kill him and take over the facility. The scientists will be under our orders and it is we who will ensure your DNA is put to a Godly purpose."

Integra stepped forward, her gun held low. She was now well within slashing distance of Alice's knives. "Now," she said. "Are you with us, or do we have to take you by force?"

"What makes you think we'll stand for that, Hellsing?" Heinkel said, raising her pistols.

Integra didn't move, nor did she seem threatened. Seras let her arm dissolve into a long tendril, which reared up like a snake, making everyone but Heinkel step back in shock.

"Why…" Alice took a step forward, her weapons down. "don't we…" she was between Heinkel and Integra. "all just…" Seras thought she was going to call a truce. "Relax!" she shouted, dealing a savage kick to Seras's stomach. The blow was much harder than any human could kick and Seras flew backward, skidding across the asphalt with the wind taken out of her.

Seras heard the sound of metal clacking against metal and Heinkel's shout. Claire was shouting too, and Seras prayed that if anyone was injured, it was Heinkel.

"Heinkel, stop!" Yumiko shouted.

Seras sat up and saw that Integra had knocked both Heinkel's pistols out of her hands with the butt of her assault rifle and was struggling with Alice who easily overpowered her.

Alice had Integra on her knees with her arm wrapped around her neck in a guillotine choke. Heinkel was moving into attack her and Seras sent her shadow arm darting, wrapping around Heinkel's leg. She tugged and drew her closer, getting to her feet as she did so.

Heinkel was on her stomach and soon Seras was sitting on her back, pinning her. "Let her go," Seras said.

"You let her go," Alice said.

"Both of you let her go," Claire said. "You're being stupid."

Leon poked his head of The Bus's door. "No, really, this is dumb," he said. "If you were faking it for the camera's sake, you can stop. They're not transmitting."

"Just because you're out to screw Umbrella doesn't mean I trust you more than them," Alice said. "I just met you a few days ago," she said to Claire.

"Hey," Heinkel said.

"Care to make a deal?" Seras said.

"No deal," Alice said. "Go ahead and kill her. Like I said, I barely know her."

It was subtle, but Seras caught something in Alice's eye. She laughed. "I don't think so," Seras said. "I don't think you'll hurt her, either."

Alice used her free hand to bring one of her curved blades up to Integra's eye. "I will," Alice said. "I'm going back to town to get my bike, then I'm leaving. I'm taking her with me, so don't try anything."

The loud clack of a shotgun round being chambered came from The Bus's doorway. Leon was back, having gone to get a combat shotgun which was now leveled at Alice's head. "This idiocy needs to stop," he said.

"You won't kill me," Alice said. "You need my DNA."

"I'm sure what we can fit into a cooler will do," Integra said.

Claire was shaking her head and mouthing "Why?" up at the sky. Yumiko had covered her mouth with her hands.

"Back to my deal," Seras said. "We'll both let our hostages go, and they'll stand off to the side while we have it out. If you win, you're free to leave. Umbrella can't blow us up for letting you off. If I win, you stay on and help however you can. Deal?"

Alice looked sourly at Leon's shotgun. Leon shrugged and tried to look apologetic. "No shadow arm," Alice said.

Seras solidified her arm. "No weapons, period. If I have to re-grow body parts, I get hungry and have to eat my friends."

"What the hell are you?" Alice asked.

"She's a vampire," Heinkel said. "A weak one. You can take her."

Alice let go of Integra and gave her a gentle shove forward down onto her hands and knees. She set her knives down, along with two pistols she had been carrying. Seras got up off Heinkel, and laid down her machete.

No one had died, so Seras counted this as a win, but she wondered all the same how tough Alice really was.

"What did I miss?" Carlos said, returning.

**To be continued… **


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter Nineteen.**

Seras walked down the road in the direction Carlos had come from, noting his puzzled expression. When she felt she was a safe distance away, she turned. Alice had followed and was standing two meters away.

"You're the one that wants to fight, you go first," Alice said.

"I don't want to fight," Seras said. "Just say the word and we can stop before we begin."

"I don't buy that Umbrella would give their enemies any equipment to do anything with. And it's a little convenient that you all seem to know each other."

Seras frowned. She really was going to have to lay one into Alice. She hated starting fights. "Alright…" she said, remembering how she had been attacked by surprise and how Alice had held a knife to Integra's eye. She darted forward and dipped to the left as if to punch with her right arm, or come up with her left, but instead dropped lower and swept at Alice's feet with leg.

Alice kicked into Sera's kick, connecting her toe where the spot Seras's foot met her shin. Pain lanced up Seras's leg and she was knocked off balance, turning and falling forward onto her stomach. She was getting to her feet when Alice came around to her right and kicked her in the side hard enough to knock her into the air and onto her back.

Through the pain, Seras noticed the sun was shining in to her eyes. It wasn't blinding her, but it was unpleasant. Suddenly it was blocked out and a weight was on her chest. Alice had sat down on her and was now sending well-aimed punches to her face.

She saw stars as fist after fist crashed into her jaw, cheek, and eye. Thinking became difficult and reluctantly, she let her blood take over and control her body, trusting it wouldn't do anything lethal or use her extra powers.

Seras felt her long legs come up and her knees wrap around Alice's mid-section. Being a vampire, her legs were stronger then most, and she gripped the woman easily, throwing her backward.

Not letting go, she rolled forward and was sitting on top of Alice. She began punching at her head, but Alice was ready and blocked. Seras punched twice more and then quickly struck hard at her stomach, connecting solidly.

The wind went out of Alice in a loud _oof_ and her arms reflexively covered her stomach as she tried to curl up. Seras took the opportunity to punch her in the chin hard enough to send her head back, striking the pavement. She hammered the bottom of her fist down onto Alice's side, above her kidney and stopped.

Alice's eyes had rolled back into her head and she seemed unconscious. Seras stayed on top of her, in case she was faking it to get a surprise attack. After she didn't move, Seras got up as the others rushed over. Jill had joined them with a first aid kit.

Seras stood back and rubbed her jaw, letting it heal. She felt a small twinge of hunger in her stomach, and felt bad about being able to recuperate so quickly; it seemed unfair. She wondered if Alice's mutations allowed for the same healing.

Alice was taken into The Bus by Jill, Leon, Claire, and Carlos. Yumiko went in to, leaving Integra, Heinkel, and Seras outside.

"Now what?" Heinkel said.

"I'm willing to forget the whole thing," Seras said. "Just realize, we're not your enemies anymore. Umbrella and Wesker are the only ones we should be fighting."

"You were defending your ally," Integra said. "Commendable, but we are your allies, too."

Heinkel had picked up her pistols and holstered them. "If you say so," she said. "Will Umbrella know you've removed the explosives?"

"They'll know the surveillance equipment is gone," Integra said. "The other concern is that we don't know the extent of the bugging, or their control over The Bus."

"I guess we'll find out when we turn it back on," Seras said. "I'm going inside, the sun is killing me."

***

Jill and Leon had removed the bugging equipment along with the semtex. There had been enough in the walls of The Bus to blow it halfway to the moon. Thinking it might be useful, they loaded some into the back.

Seras crawled under The Bus and plugged it back in, noting that there were loping figures down the highway near the exit to the town they had come from. "Lock up," she said, climbing aboard and shutting the hatch. "Company."

Jill's console began beeping. "Looks like the phone is for us," she said.

"Answer it," Integra said.

Jill pushed a button on the panel. "What is going on?" Wesker's voice came sounding through the cabin. "You had an extended power outage."

"Once again your shoddy workmanship has come back to bite you, Wesker," Integra said. "We've removed the bombs and the bugging devices, plus the remote control. We own The Bus now, and you'll be happy to know that we have Alice in our possession."

Wesker said nothing for a long time. Seras thought he had hung up, but he finally spoke. "What is the meaning of this?" Wesker said flatly.

"It's simple," Integra said. "We're getting you before you get us. Don't pretend you weren't going to do just that, there's no one to convince."

Again, silence for a few extended moments. "You want the truth?" Wesker said. "Quite frankly, it would have been too much trouble to kill you, and quite possibly more satisfying to allow to live and see the dawning of a new age, courtesy of Umbrella technology. The looks on your faces after we snatched victory from the jaws of defeat would've been more exquisite than your death throes ever could be."

Seras could tell he was fighting to hold back anger. It meant they had succeeded in getting one over on Umbrella, but it also meant he would want revenge and it unnerved her.

"I'll still settle for death throes," Wesker said. "If you're big plan is to steal off with the vehicle and defend the remnants of humanity, I truly do pity you. I might not even waste my time sending forces to kill you, as it will happen eventually. However, if you're plan is to make a vaccine on your own terms, then I'll be waiting for you here. The coordinates for the Nevada facility are in your map logs. This is the only place on the continent you'll be able to do it, and maybe even the world. Either way, you'll come to regret this decision."

They all heard the connection cut off. "He sounded mad," Ashley said.

"And unless he's playing games, we've removed his controls on The Bus," Integra said. "That only leaves…" she looked over at Alice, who was now conscious and lying on a bunk. An ice pack was resting under her head and she had a black eye.

"A deal's a deal," Alice said. "And for what it's worth, I can see you're no friend of Wesker's."

"So we're all friends here, then?" Claire said. "No more fighting?"

"No more fighting," Heinkel said. "Yumie will behave if and when she wakes up, I'm pretty sure."

Yumiko smiled nervously as all eyes fell on her.

"I think we aught to roll back and get hooked up with the Hummer, and Alice's bike," Carlos said. "It's cramped in here and there's no need to let them go to waste."

Leon threw The Bus into gear and turned it around. Seras sighed and rubbed her eyes. She had been up all day and would be up longer while they cleared the area of zombies and pumped gas out of the stations underground tanks. Knowing she wouldn't be able to fall asleep at night, she briefly thought of napping while the rest worked, but knew she wouldn't allow it.

"Tired?" Jill asked.

"I don't care what happens," Seras said. "Tomorrow, I'm sleeping."

**To be continued…**


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter Twenty.**

Wesker stood over the body of a dead researcher. His job had been to grunt work for those who were smarter than him and his loss could easily be spared.

His death hadn't been quick. He was missing an arm and patches of flesh from his face, but in the end he had succumbed to a crushed skull. Wesker was reminded why he wore black much of the time; it didn't show stains.

With his anger dulled, he turned around to face Krauser who was sitting at the conference table with his arms crossed over his chest. He was looking at Wesker with no expression, but Wesker knew the urge to say "I told you so" was great in the other man.

Krauser had enough tact not to say those words. "Well," Wesker said. "Now it seems we have some preparations to make."

"You were right. They'll either come here or they'll try and run. My guess, knowing them, is that they'll be on there way here once they form a plan of attack," Krauser said.

Wesker rubbed his chin, using the hand that didn't have blood on its fingers. Mounting a defense of the facility was a straightforward task. There was the one elevator to the surface and then a long, narrow disposal tunnel that emptied out into a quarry a mile off. The actual facility was made up of long hallways, wide open rooms, elevators and stairwells. There was also the obstacle course Isaacs had created to test Alice clones.

"I've done some added research on our vampire friend," Wesker said. "The nature of her abilities is such that we have no way of keeping her out. Even if I believed in that bunk about holy water, Communion wafers, and crucifixes, we don't have enough, or any of it really, to cover all her possible entry points. She could get down here and open the doors or kill our personnel all too easily."

Krauser was smiling. He drew his long knife and began cleaning his fingernails with the blade. "None of that makes any difference," he said. "Not if we do things my way."

"And that way is?"

"Simple, we don't lock ourselves down here and try to keep them out. We let them in. This is our turf and we have them outnumbered and outgunned. We'll let them come down here, get over-confident, and then we'll crush them."

Nodding, Wesker sat down at the table across from Krauser. He hadn't cared much for the "My way" comment. Krauser needed to be reigned in. "That's a good plan," he said. "But we can improve on it. Victoria, if we allow her down here, can cause quite a bit of damage. In addition to luring them down here into a trap, perhaps it would be best if we went on the offense and thinned their ranks a bit. Don't you agree?"

"We'd be spreading ourselves thin," he said. "And tipping our hand."

"I was thinking we should send you, with some light backup, to harass them. At best, you kill Victoria or at least one of the others, and come back making them think they've seen the limit of our strength. It would take some of the starch out from their assault at any rate."

Sheathing his knife, Krauser crossed his arms again. He had fixed Wesker with a look he didn't like any better than his tone, but finally began laughing. "For a minute there, I thought you were telling me I'm expendable," he said. "I'd love to get some action. I'll do that while you prepare things down here."

He stood up and headed towards the door. "Who should I bring for backup?"

"Try experiment 42B. If Isaacs gives you trouble, loosen some of his teeth," Wesker said.

"Experiment 42B," Wesker said, opening the door. "Ha. Easy on the eyes at least."

***

"By all means, take them," Isaacs said, standing in front of a console beneath a two way mirror. "We're done running trials, as we don't have many more clones to spare. With the original close at hand, there's no need for them."

Krauser looked into the mirror at the white room beyond. It was lit by harsh white bulbs, making the floor, walls, and ceiling ill-defined except for the one at the back with a bench on it. Sitting on the bench were six identical naked women. They were thin, with small breasts and dirty blond hair. They sat upright with blank expressions on their faces and an emptiness of their blue eyes. "They look like drones," Krauser said.

"Their other instincts should kick in once you start giving them orders," Isaacs said. "Although I don't know what will happen if the confront the original. Their psychic abilities are all dulled, but if they come into contact with the Alice then…"

He was shoved by Krauser away from the door. "Yeah, yeah," he said. "They're cannon fodder."

Walking through a small decontamination chamber, Krauser entered the room with the six women. "Atten-SHUN," Krauser said. All six women stood up with their heads straight and arms down to their sides. "Can you understand me?"

"Yes, sir," they said in unison.

"Excellent," Krauser. "Get you asses down to the armory double time and equip yourselves for long range combat. I'll brief you further at thirteen-hundred hours."

The clones filed quickly past Krauser and out of the room. Already they seemed more alert than before and Krauser wondered if their mission might not see a bit of success. He would survive, of course, but he wondered if any of the clones would.

**To be continued… **


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter Twenty-One.**

The Bus had been pumped full of gasoline and its reserve tanks had been filled. The gas to spare had been tied to the roof of the Hummer. With the vehicle's fuel conservation system, it was likely they could drive to Alaska without stopping if they decided to do so. Seras had helped them stock The Bus with supplies as well as the Hummer.

Using the GPS maps, Ashley plotted a course for them to go towards north of the Nevada facility. The need to keep moving was still present, but a battle plan had to be devised.

"Seras, you're going to be the one that opens the place up for us," Integra said the evening after Seras had gotten a full day's rest. They had formed a plan of attack during the day and were now parked in a the lot of a shopping mall. "I trust you'll want to use the full force of all the power you can muster. From what little we've been able to judge, the entrance to the facility is an elevator shaft leading underground. Wesker will likely be waiting for us with heavy firepower, so you'll be the one to soften it up."

"Yes, sir," Seras said.

Integra took in a breath, letting Seras know she was about hear something she might not like. "There's a second way in," she said. "A disposal tunnel a mile off in a quarry. The Iscariots, along with Claire and Carlos are going in that direction."

"Why are we splitting our forces?" Seras asked quietly. Jill and Ashley were asleep on The Bus, along with Heinkel and Yumiko. Space in the Hummer was cramped.

"To make them split theirs'," Integra said. Alice and the rest us will come up behind you. Remember, the hallways will make it so numbers won't count for much. The secondary force will draw their attention and weaken the main line. And to be quite honest, the quality of our force isn't something to brush off."

Seras nodded, but was skeptical. If it were only Wesker and some Umbrella soldiers to fight, it would be an easy victory. Alice had mentioned someone by the name of Krauser, who Leon also seemed to be aware of. Whatever Krauser was, he was likely dangerous. Then there was the fact that it was an Umbrella lab and contained God only knew what.

"Have we thought about the alternative?" Seras asked.

"What alternative?"

"The one where say to hell with those loons and go off on our own. I'm not saying we need to run around and rescue everyone, but it's likely some of us are going to die in all of this."

Integra sat back in her chair and removed her glasses. It was a gesture of annoyance Seras found condescending. "You know…"

"I do know," Seras said, being careful not to speak too loudly. "I don't think it's so outrageous to think a group of humans can survive in this world. We don't even know if we'll be able to make a vaccine with the researchers that might survive our assault. The odds are quite long we'll come out on top."

Integra put her glasses back on and patted her breast pocket for a cigar that wasn't there. It was a gesture Seras had only recently noticed. "Our lives are our own, Seras," Integra said. "Is it us dying you're worried about, or is it you living?"

For the first time in Seras's life, she felt the strong urge to slap Integra. She didn't when she realized she was right. The thought of outliving everyone she knew had become more prevalent in recent years, and she was even beginning to fathom why Alucard had turned her in the first place. Loneliness was a terrifying thing, even for monsters.

"Put yourself in my shoes," Seras said. "I'm just as human as you are, you know. What the Major said about our will making us human was true, even if he was wrong about himself. I'm the one who's likely to be left standing after all of this. I'm the one most likely to see how this all comes out. If it comes out good, then fine, but if it's bad…" she shook her head.

"We're all going to die," Integra said. "Whether we're killed within the next few days, or die of starvation in a year. I commend humanity for surviving in this world as long as it has, but it's a losing game without a vaccine. Eventually the T-virus will infect everyone or the carriers and mutants will do their work. It's as though we've been thrown back into prehistory only the dinosaurs are still walking about. We need an edge."

Seras let an unpleasant smile creep across her face. Integra seemed taken aback, and they both knew what Seras was about to say. "So being human doesn't cut it anymore?"

She didn't move as Integra's hand came towards her face. The sound of the slap made the others stir and Leon turned his head for a moment, but kept driving and remaining silent.

Not looking at Integra, Seras was quiet for a moment. "I'm sorry," Integra said.

"You're right," Seras said. "I am afraid to lose you. To lose any of you. Even those Vatican women." She was speaking quietly, but wondered if a few weren't awake all the same. Privacy for the past few months had been non-existent and she had learned to do without it.

"You've lost people before," Integra said.

"I'm running out of people," Seras said.

"Well then you'll just have to protect all of us, now won't you?" Integra said, smiling. "Besides, if I can do without my cigars, you can go with a few less friends."

Seras looked at her and then broke out into a loud laugh which she stifled with her hand. Integra chuckled as well.

"Both of you shut up or I'll shoot," Heinkel said from beneath a blanket.

Integra stood up. "Good night, Seras. Make sure Leon doesn't drive the entire night."

"I won't," Seras said, moving up to the passenger's seat. Leon nodded to her as she sat down. He was due to be off in an hour and Seras somewhat dreaded having maneuver the large vehicle on her own. Driving it was tricky, and while they all had learned to do it, Leon was the best.

"I don't think anyone is going to die," Leon said after a few minutes.

"How do you know?" Seras asked, tapping the dashboard. "Does this thing have a psychic hotline?"

"No," Leon said. "It's just that we've come this far, it doesn't seem likely we'll kick off anytime soon. Raccoon City, Los Illumindados, the end of the world…what's another Umbrella base?"

"I think being up all this time is getting to you," she said. "Go to bed and let me drive."

"I take it back, we're all doomed," Leon said, as he hit the cruise control to let Seras take the wheel. She hated it when he didn't stop first before switching and didn't have time to hit him as he headed for the bunks.

**To be continued…**


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter Twenty-Two.**

Claire, Carlos, Heinkel, and Yumie rode over the desert scrub in the Hummer. Claire sat in the passenger's seat looking at a topographical map and spotting what little landmarks there were outside the window. She was armed with a 9mm handgun and a .44 magnum revolver. She also carried some of the Semtex that had been taken from The Bus along with a detonator in a backpack at her feet.

"We should be coming right up on it," she said.

The ground became loose and they could all see where the quarry dipped and expanded into a huge bowl ringed with winding dirt road that overgrown with scrub. Rusted digging equipment was at the bottom of the football field sized basin. Carlos parked the Hummer at the top and they all got out, marching single file down the dirt road.

Claire was glad the tunnel entrance was obvious. Refuse, garbage, and corpses lay in a pile outside it and it was t ground level, easy enough to drive a truck through. "Should we drive?" Claire asked.

"You tell us, you're the commander," Heinkel said.

"Let's take the Hummer. We might need to get out fast," she said.

They walked back up in time to see the Hummer explode.

All of them ducked as bits of debris rained down on them. Claire wondered if she had left some of the Semtex inside accidentally and it had gone off somehow. She knew something else was the matter when bullets from automatic weapons peppered the ground around them. "Take cover!" Carlos shouted.

Claire saw figures walking towards them from across the scrubland. They must have been lying in wait near the edge of the basin and had gotten up to either shoot down on them, or come up from behind in the tunnel.

She began crawling along with Carlos on her belly down the road towards the tunnel where they would have cover and would be able to defend themselves. Heinkel was firing back with one hand while she lie on her stomach, trying to keep the heads of their attackers down.

A bullet hit the dirt near Claire's head, knocking sand into her eye. When the edge of the basin was above her head, she stood and ran down with Carlos, followed by Heinkel and Yumie, to the tunnel entrance which she hoped hadn't been set up as well to greet them.

It was. Alice stepped out of the tunnel with an assault rifle and fired before anyone could react. The gun had been set to full auto and the bullets were wild. Still, they were all in a tight group and the range was close. Carlos went down while shooting, Yumie went down as well. Claire dropped, but didn't think she had been shot. Heinkel merely crouched and fired, putting a bullet through Alice's forehead. She fell dead with her weapon still spraying into the dirt on full auto.

"Ah, my leg," Carlos said, holding his thing.

Yumie was on her back, sucking in air and bleeding out her chest.

"Yumie!" Heinkel shouted, crawling over to her friend.

"The tunnel!" Claire shouted. "Get to it, now!" she got up and dragged Carlos to his feet while he managed to hobble. Heinkel hooked Yumie by the armpits and dragged her down after Carlos and Claire.

"That traitorous bitch!" Heinkel shouted. "How in the hell did she…"

"Who cares right now?" Claire said, letting Carlos lean against the tunnel wall where the rock became steel. "Get pressure on her chest. Carlos, cover our back, I got the entrance."

The tunnel itself wasn't lit, so Claire had no way of knowing what was beyond the little bit of light that able to get under the ceiling. She also wondered why Alice had betrayed them, and how.

"That bitch," Heinkel said. "How the hell did she…when the hell…"

Claire studied the dead woman out of the corner of her eye while keeping an eye on the road leading down. They'd be tossing grenades soon, if they had any. The woman was Alice, but she was dressed differently and her hair looked cleaner. The Alice Claire knew, like the rest of them, was in bad need of a shower. Unless Alice had time to bathe before to the base and ambushing them, it wasn't her.

"Looks like you killed your friend," a male voice said from above. "I've got more, don't worry," he said.

"Who the hell are you!" Heinkel said. "Where's Wesker?"

Yumie had stopped breathing.

"Jack Krauser," he said. "I was hoping to fight you all at once a little sooner than this, but you surprised us by splitting up. Satellite surveillance is a wonderful thing."

Claire realized the dead Alice must be one of the clones she had heard mentioned. How many Krauser had with him, she didn't know.

She tapped Carlos and motioned for him to keep an eye on the front entrance. She took off her back pack and removed half of the Semtex, along with one of the detonators. "Are you sure they won't miss you up front?" Claire shouted. "You know we're the decoy, right?" She began setting the Semtex and concealing it behind rocks.

"I know that once you're dead, I'll be going to the front to kill the rest of you and collar that bitch Alice. It was a mistake to bring any of you onboard this project to begin with. Should've just left you to die."

An arrow landed in the dirt and was beeping. It exploded, sending smoke everywhere. Coughing, Claire knew she was too late and they were rushing the entrance. The Semtex had been set to explode via a radio remote, but they wouldn't be able to put enough distance between them and the bomb in time.

"Duck," Carlos said, and began firing his rifle into the smoke. Claire herself lay flat as she could and heard Heinkel begin shooting blindly while they were joined by more gunshots.

She felt a bullet zip over her head, into her ponytail and knew any moment the next would kill her. The smoke was clearing and five dead women, plus the first, lie on the ground. Heinkel was clutching her chest now, and kneeling over Yumie. Claire felt a pain in her forearm and saw that it had been grazed by a bullet.

Claire got to her knees as Krauser jumped down from the top of the ledge and landed with his back to them. He was a tall, shirtless, muscular man with short blond hair. He dropped the bow he had been carrying and turned, as Heinkel shot him in the chest.

He laughed as the blood ran down his body. He had painted red streaks across his face and was looking at them with a grim smile. His left arm began to twitch and the bone tore out of it under its own power, forming a wide, long, blade. "This is going to be fun," he said. "With any luck, I'll be able to save your heads as trophies."

"Here's a trophy," Claire said, throwing the Semtex bomb at Krauser. He caught it with his human arm and looked puzzled.

As he realized what it was, he tried to drop it, but it was too late. Claire pushed the detonator button as she turned away, covering her ears at the same time.

She felt the vibration from the bomb ripple through her body, making her want to vomit. She tried to hold it back, but the ringing in her ears was too much and her breakfast came out in a wash.

Claire rolled into her back, away from the mess she had made and saw Carlos out of the corner of her eye, slumped over but alive. Breathing even and looking at the ceiling, she hoped no surprises would come until she recovered.

**To be continued…**


	23. Chapter 23

**Chapter Twenty-Three.**

The elevator gave Seras no trouble; it was obvious they wanted her to come down, but into what, she didn't know. Her hope was that Wesker had underestimated her and she would easily tear through whatever he had set against her. Leon and the others were in The Bus above, running down the crowd of zombies that had collected outside the fence they had smashed through on the way in.

Her Harkonnen was slung over her back and extra shells were in a bandolier around her waist. In one of the slots was the syringe that held the tranquilizer she saved from her fight with the Tyrant aboard the ship she had used to cross the Atlantic with Integra.

In her hand was her machete, the weapon she had become partial to over the years. The elevator stopped, the door opened, and she was faced with a glass hallway. The floor was glass, and so were the walls. The ceiling looked normal, with vents and sprinklers. Through the glass walls, she could diodes set into the wall.

The door at the end of the hall was open and there looked to be nothing more than another hallway beyond it. Stepping into the hall, she was not surprised to see the door ahead shut along with the elevator door behind her.

What was slightly perplexing was the beam of the light than now stretched across the hall at the other end. It came sliding towards her, and she ducked. Her mouth dropped open in horror as the end of her Harkonnen barrel clanged to the floor in front of her; the tip had been sheared off at an angle.

"My cannon!" she said, her voice cracking. "Oh no."

The beam reappeared at the end of the hall and split into multiple other beams which turned at an angle and were joined by others, making a square matrix she wouldn't be able to fit through. "You ruined my cannon!" she shouted, forming her arm into shadow and driving it into the wall next to her. The glass splintered and the beams became erratic. She thrashed her shadow tendril around, hoping to hit the machine's guts and did, sending sparks shooting out the hole and shutting off the beams. The hallway went dim.

She un-shouldered the Harkonnen and set it down like a fallen comrade. "I'll fix you, I promise," she said.

The door at the end of the hall was torn of its hinges easily. She let it fall forward and peeked down both ends of the white hall. It was empty, but she heard rushing footsteps from both ends.

Running back to her Harkonnen, she picked it up. "Maybe you're still good," she said, rushing back. The barrel had lost a quarter of its length, but would still fire. From the sound, she knew two groups of armed men were at either side of the hall, waiting to shoot her if she stepped out. One side must have been ready to go first, so they wouldn't hit the other, and she wondered with it was.

She stepped out quickly and stepped back. As she had hoped, an overeager guard had fired, telling her the ones to her left were taking the lead. She pointed her Harkonnen around the left wall and fired. There was an explosion and screams, followed by automatic weapon fire from either end of the hall.

Breaching the Harkonnen, she loaded it and gave the other end of the hall a shot. More gunfire, more screams.

"Surrender, now!" she shouted. "We've come for Wesker. Give him over!"

Strong hands gripped her head from behind and twisted, snapping her neck. Her body went numb and she was kicked forward, striking the wall and dropping her cannon. Sending blood to fix her neck, she rolled and saw Wesker's boot just in time for it to be driven into her face.

She saw stars and felt Wesker's boot coming down on her repeatedly. Any normal person would have been looking at a hospital stay, or perhaps a few months in a coma. Deciding now was the time to pull out the stops, she embraced the sensation of having her head pulped; she imagined her entire body losing cohesion and becoming a fluid mass.

Instead of forming into a raven, she passed around Wesker's feet as he tried to step back. She enveloped his legs and formed her torso around his back, where she took hold of him around the neck with her now solid arm.

His grip was strong on her arm as he tried to pull her off, but she held on tight, and bit him in the back of the head for good measure. He grunted in pain and drove his head back into her mouth, knocking out one of her fangs.

"No," Wesker said. "You're not winning…"

"Yes I am," Seras said, forming her hips back into a solid substance along with some of the objects that had melded with her. One such object was the syringe, large and filled with enough tranquilizer to sedate a Tyrant.

She pulled the cap off with her bloody mouth and drove the needle deep into Wesker's ear. He sunk his teeth into her forearm out of desperation as she depressed the lever, sending the tranquilizer fluid directly into his braincase. He immediately began to foam at the mouth and sunk to his knees as Seras formed herself back into her original shape.

"D-don't move," a voice from behind her said.

She turned to see a security guard, dressed in black and pointing a shaky assault rifle at her. He was covered in blood and his ear looked burnt off. "Put that down," she said. "It's over."

"S-stay back," he said.

She looked at his scared, brown eyes and held them. Without moving her body, she pushed herself forward and felt something in him roll backwards. "I'm your friend. Put the gun down. You don't have to obey Wesker anymore."

The man, still shaking, set the rifle on the floor. His eyes were still held by Seras. "Okay," he said. "But who will turn off the self-destruct system?"

"I'm sorry, what?" Seras said.

The man blinked and seemed to regain his senses. "The self-destruct system," he said. "Who will turn it off if Wesker is dead? Dr. Isaacs can't, Hawks can't…I don't think Krauser…" he turned and ran down the hall, leaving Seras to stand over Wesker's body.

She knelt down and searched it looking for any kind of device or code that might turn off the self destruct sequence the man had been talking about. Wesker was carrying many odd things, but none of it looked to be what she wanted.

"I think he had the right idea," a voice said.

She turned and looked down the hall. An older man in a white lab coat stood near where a Harkonnen shell had exploded. "My name is Dr. Isaacs," he said, walking forward. "I've wanted to see you for some time, Seras Victoria."

"You're the head researcher of the Alice Project," Seras said. "We need you to make a vaccine."

"I'm afraid that's not possible," he said, stepping closer. Seras noticed his face looked terrible. It was sunken and purple. "Even if this facility weren't about to explode and I had the original Alice's cooperation, I'm in no shape to work, you see."

He held out his forearm where a nasty looking puncture wound stood out, bruised and bleeding. "I knew what would happen when Wesker activated the destruct sequence and came to fight you himself. He would die and all would be lost. Perhaps now, for a brief moment before my mind goes, I'll understand what it means to be one with the T-virus."

He was twitching as he walked and his arms bean to ripple inside their sleeves. When his biceps tore through the cloth, Seras could see he was mutating rapidly. He was also between the elevator and her. "Don't go that way," he said. "They never indented for you to leave, and neither do I."

Isaacs swung his arm at her, the mutated appendage stretching across the room , and swatted her hard in the shoulder. She slammed into the wall and drew her machete once she had found her footing. Isaacs swatted at her again, only to have his arm severed by a powerful stroke of her machete.

Shouting with rage, he ran at her. His other arm had blistered and ruptured into a giant claw, which she dodged by rolling away and taking a swipe at his legs as she went. She put a deep cut across the front of his shin, but it didn't cause him to falter. He turned and came at her again. This time she dissolved her arm and used the shadow tendril to shove him backward, knocking him onto his back.

Dropping her machete, she picker up her Harkonnen and loaded a shell into it. Isaacs sat up, a look of rage crossed his melting features as she fired a round into his face, obliterating his head.

Countdown sequence activated. Five minutes until detonation. All personnel proceed to the evacuation platform. A mechanical voice blared through the halls.

She didn't think she could meld her Harkonnen cannon when she shape shifted, so she hurled it instead down into the elevator shaft. If the explosion merely collapsed everything, maybe she could come back for it. Forming herself into a raven, she made to dart up the shaft but then remembered the others in the disposal tunnel. On the way back out, she saw a lose vent cover in the ceiling where Wesker had come out of to ambush her. How he had been so quiet and snuck up on her like he had, she would never know.

Flying down the halls, she reached out with her senses, trying to discern where the others were and how to get to them. The facility and the vaccine were a loss, but she could handle that if she found the others alive in time.

**To be continued… **


	24. Chapter 24

**Chapter Twenty-Four.**

Integra stood atop The Bus with her arms crossed and watched the shack that covered the elevator shaft collapse. The ground inside the fenced off area suddenly sunk ten feet, and with it, her heart.

"Do you think she's alright?" Jill asked, lowering her rifle as she crouched next to Integra.

"Seras? She's fine. It's the others I'm concerned about."

What she didn't say was that she felt humanity's last chance had just been buried under tons upon tons of rubble.

"What do we do?" Jill asked.

"Nothing is coming up from this end, so let's drive over to the quarry tunnel and see what shape it's in."

They both went down the roof hatch, and Integra told Leon where to drive. He drove The Bus around the pit where the facility had been, running over stray zombies as he skirted the fence.

Leon slowed after half an hour. "I see Claire," he said.

Integra looked through the windshield. Claire was walking across the scrub land, wobbling slightly. Integra opened the side hatch and went out with Jill, assault rifle ready to dispatch Claire if she had become infected. Claire put a hand up as they got close. "I'm fine," she said. "Yumiko is dead."

"What happened?" Jill asked. "Where is everyone?"

"They're with Seras at the tunnel entrance. Carlos has been shot, and Heinkel is wounded too. We were attacked by Alice clones and Jack Krauser."

Claire stumbled and fell. Integra and Jill went over to her, while Alice came out and helped bring her aboard The Bus. Lying her down on the table in the back, Jill looked into Claire's eyes. "She has a concussion," Jill said.

The hatch was closed and The Bus began moving again. It pulled to a stop at the top of the large basin and Integra once again stepped out, this time with Alice. They walked down the hill where Seras stood next to Heinkel as she sat over Yumiko's corpse, her chin against her chest. Carlos was sitting against the rock wall overlooking the quarry with a bandage tied around his leg.

"What happened?" Integra asked.

"I killed Wesker. Dr. Isaacs had become a mutant, and I killed him too. Wesker had rigged the place to explode. Only he could turn it off. I'm sorry."

"Forget it," Integra said. "Heinkel, we need to burry her and get moving."

Heinkel nodded. Integra noticed she was bleeding. She had been shot low in her chest on the right side. With any luck, they could remove the bullet if it was still there and keep it from becoming infected.

Seras walked over and picked Yumiko's body up. Integra helped Carlos hobble up the hill, while Alice walked next to Heinkel. They set Yumiko down in The Bus while Carlos and Heinkel's wounds were tended. Jill did most of the work, while Ashley helped her.

"Too bad Rebecca isn't here," Jill said.

"Who?" Ashley asked.

"Rebecca Chambers. A STARS field medic. Best doctor in the world."

Seras closed the hatch and went to a chair to sit down. She looked tired and Integra thought she would enjoy being on a regular vampire's sleep schedule from now on.

'Where to?" Leon asked.

"Wherever you like," Integra said. "I'm out of ideas."

"I've always wanted to go to Alaska," Leon said.

"Alaska sounds nice," Seras said.

"Alaska it is, then," Leon said. He threw The Bus into gear and headed north. Ashley, having helped Carlos all she could, took her seat next to Leon and began to chart a course northward.

"Well, was it worth coming over to the states?" Carlos asked.

"It was," Heinkel said. "Even though Yumiko is dead…I suppose she's with the Lord now and those Umbrella bastards are burning in Hell where they belong."

They were all silent. Carlos was the first to break it. "At least we got this sweet ride."

Again, silence, then Heinkel laughed. Soon they all joined in, and began discussing how they might decorate the outside.

**The end.**


End file.
